Election agency that helped end one-party rule hobbled

MEXICO CITY » Mexican lawmakers passed sweeping measures overhauling the nation’s electoral agency Wednesday, dealing a blow to the institution that oversees voting and that helped push the country away from one-party rule two decades ago.

The changes, which will cut the electoral agency’s staff, diminish its autonomy and limit its ability to punish politicians for breaking electoral laws, are the most significant in a series of moves by the Mexican president to undermine the country’s fragile institutions — part of a pattern of challenges to democratic norms across the Western Hemisphere.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose party and its allies control Congress, argues that the measures will save millions of dollars and make voting more efficient. The new rules also seek to make it easier for Mexicans who live abroad to cast online ballots.

But critics — including some who have worked alongside the president — say the overhaul is an attempt to weaken a key pillar of Mexico’s democracy.

The leader of the president’s party in the Senate has called it unconstitutional.

Now, another test looms: The Supreme Court, which has increasingly become a target of the president’s ire, is expected to hear a challenge to the measures in the coming months.

If the changes stand, electoral officials say it will become difficult to carry out free and fair elections — including in a crucial presidential contest next year.

The watchdog, called the National Electoral Institute, earned international acclaim for facilitating clean elections in Mexico, paving the way for the opposition to win the presidency in 2000 after decades of rule by a single party.

Yet since losing a presidential election in 2006 by less than 1% of the vote, López Obrador has repeatedly argued, without evidence, that the watchdog actually perpetrated electoral fraud — a claim that resembles voter-fraud conspiracy theories in the United States and Brazil.