Activists consider that the participation of migrants in the polls for the elections in Mexico will increase
If President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Plan B of the electoral reform is approved, migrants will be able to make their dream of having different options to vote from abroad come true, through the voter identification card, the Mexican passport, the consular registration, via the Internet or in person at the Mexican consulates,
Juan José Gutiérrez, director of the Coalition for Immigrant Rights, said they support electoral reform because immigrants have been waiting for 105 years for justice regarding their constitutional right to cast effective suffrage.
“This seems to finally bear fruit because the electoral reform has been proposed to allow Mexicans to vote with valid identification such as voter identification, consular registration or passport.”
Doing a bit of history, Gutiérrez said that in 16 years, in which they have been allowed to vote from abroad, 800,000 people have obtained their voter identification cards, of which less than 100,000 voted in the 2018 presidential elections.
“But the numbers could rise to millions if those with consular registration and passports can also vote. This means that our vote can be multiplied by 20”.
He stressed that this is extraordinary news because for the first time they would have full rights, but he also said that all the authorities are going to have to take Mexicans living abroad into account.
“We are going to be a decisive factor in tipping the balance on the destinies of our Mexican nation. We are no longer going to be a rickety vote.”
He commented that unfortunately the National Electoral Institute (INE) has made voting abroad the most expensive in the world with meager results in voting.
“It is an electoral body that was founded in 1990, two years after Carlos Salinas stripped Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas of his clear victory; and since then it has been under the control of the political parties of the PRI-PAN and now the PRD, and they have deprived us of a full vote by imposing a very complicated voting-by-mail process on us.”
He now said that under President AMLO’s proposal, they will be able to vote by mail, the Internet and in person at the consulates.
Participation will increase
The organizer and community activist in San Bernardino, Juvenal Estrada, considered that by approving Plan B of the electoral reform in Mexico, the vote of Mexicans abroad will increase because different documents can be used to vote.
“Until now we can only vote with the voter card, and many people don’t know how to get it out. They also face many obstacles to make an appointment at the consulates; and then we have to deal with the lack of information from the INE and its continuous sabotage so that migrants can vote.”
He said that by having the option of using various identification documents to vote from abroad, the bottleneck that exists among the Mexican community abroad will be released, and turnout at the polls will grow.
“The truth is that this reform makes me very happy because it opens the doors to great participation, by mail, the Internet, going to Mexico and through the Consulate.”
Although at the close of this edition Plan B of the electoral reform that expands the forms of voting in Mexican elections for migrants abroad was being debated in the Mexican Senate, Estrada estimated that it has a 90% probability of being approved.
“Now if the politicians are going to be interested in coming to talk to us; And that is where the community must be very alert, precisely to see with whom it commits its vote. It is not only about giving support for giving support, but about seeing which candidate offers us the best agenda”.
San Diego community activist Maribel Solache acknowledged that she was also very happy when she heard that the 40 million Mexicans living in the United States will now have many alternatives to vote.
“Approximately one million have voting credentials, but if they don’t register on the nominal list, there end up being 500,000 who can actually vote. I am very pleased that the bureaucracy of the voter’s credential is finished both in the INE and in the consulates, and thus exercise our electoral political right ”.
She said that the three possibilities of voting, on paper, electronically and by consulate, also please her.
“I think that it should be included in that reform that we can be candidates for senators or representatives independently, not only through political parties, because now the representatives we have are dedicated solely to defending the proposals of their parties, and they do not have no interest in working for the needs of migrants.”