Mexican citizens in Houston, US frustrated by obstacles to vote in Mexico’s presidential elections

Amanda Logan holds her Mexican elections voter's card to be able to vote from a foreign country. Logan says she has tried many times to register the card to be able to vote and the system is not allowing her or her friend to register the card. Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018, in Aldine. ( Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle ) less Amanda Logan holds her Mexican elections voter's card to be able to vote from a foreign country. Logan says she has tried many times to register the card to be able to vote and the system is not allowing her or ... more Photo: Marie D. De Jesus, Houston Chronicle / Houston Chronicle Photo: Marie D. De Jesus, Houston Chronicle / Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Mexican citizens in Houston, US frustrated by obstacles to vote in Mexico’s presidential elections 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

Carmen Ortega is anxious to cast her vote in Mexico’s July 1 presidential election, but she’s worried time is running out for thousands of potential voters.

Ortega is one of hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens living in Houston and other U.S. cities facing numerous obstacles to complete registration by the March 31 deadline.

She’s followed instructions from Mexican election offices, applied for and received her voter’s credential, but the government telephone lines to activate the cards are operating sporadically, or not at all.

“I feel it’s very important that we vote in the presidential election,” Ortega said. “It is an obligation for us living abroad to participate and have a say in the future of Mexico.”

There is much at stake in the crowded upcoming national elections with about 3,400 offices up for grabs, and they come at a time when the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as PRI, has been hounded by charges of pervasive corruption.

The long-ruling party PRI, which held the presidency for over 70 years until the beginning of this century, came back to power with the election of President Enrique Peña Nieto in 2012 with a promise of transformation. Instead, it has produced an outcry by the Mexican public. More than 20 governors are either in prison, fugitives or are under scrutiny for causes ranging from embezzling to money laundering.

The controversies have stirred interest in the election, but Mexican government officials with the National Electoral Institute said only a little more than 14 percent of about 600,000 citizens who asked for voting credentials have had their documents activated. The low activation rate has left some activists and critics wondering if Mexicans living abroad are being ignored, or even intentionally blocked from participating.

Tony Payan, director of the Baker Institute’s Mexico Center, said the obstacles to voting abroad have been installed by Mexican officials who are fearful that the expatriate vote will go to opposition candidates.

“It is designed to sabotage (the vote of) Mexicans abroad; it doesn’t work because they don’t want for it to work,” Payan said of the INE voting system.

Mexican citizens in the U.S. had voted mostly for the opposition candidates since the historic campaign of former president Vicente Fox ended seven decades of political dominance by the PRI, Payan said.

Fox’s victory in the 2000 election for the conservative National Action Party, known as PAN, upended the PRI’s near-total control over government posts from the Mexican presidency to the federal congress and down to most state and local offices.

Payan said that the vote of Mexicans living in the U.S. is at best unpredictable, but historically had gone against the PRI. The party now wants “to suppress their participation,” he said.

In the two presidential elections were Mexicans abroad have been able to vote, both in 2006 and 2012 more than 80 percent cast their ballots for opposition candidates, according to data from the INE.

But David Maciel, an adviser to the president of the INE, strongly denies the implication of favoritism.

“The INE is absolutely, 100 percent committed to try and get the vote out extensively, correctly and secretly,” he said, stressing that the institution is non-partisan.

Mexico’s top diplomat in Houston, General Consul Oscar Rodriguez Cabrera, said that to imply that the INE is intentionally discouraging the vote abroad “reflects an ignorance of the current democratic process in Mexico.”

“We have a very solid, very serious institution organizing the elections; the country has evolved significantly in the way we conduct our elections,” Rodriquez said, adding that “the instrument to vote in Mexico is so secure that the card is the default identification that people use for everything.”

Duncan Wood, the director of the Mexico Institute with the Wilson Center's, a non-partisan research institution focused on global policies, considers that the problems Mexicans abroad are having "are more easily explained by inadequacies and inefficiencies of the Mexican bureaucracy than by a deliberate attempt to stop people voting."

"The Mexican government clearly needs to work harder to provide services to their citizens in ways which are accessible and which are easy to encourage more democratic participation," Wood said, adding that "the final step of making a phone call to confirm that has become the obstacle, is a completely unnecessary one."

Mexican consular officials in Houston said that as of March 11, more than 620,500 citizens have solicited their cards at the consulates abroad. So far more than 490,000 voting cards were delivered by regular mail. However, only 14 percent, or 90, 976 of the cards, have been activated as the March 31 deadline approached.

To be able to vote in their country’s elections, Mexican citizens such as Ortega have to navigate a process that involves many steps.

First, they have to request their credential in person at their consulates. In Houston, Mexican consular officials report that more than 44,000 Mexicans in the Houston area had applied for their cards, as of Friday.

The requests are then sent to the electoral institute in Mexico. Election officials issue the cards and return them to Mexicans abroad by regular email.

Although this is the third presidential where Mexicans have been allowed to vote from abroad, it will be the first when they can register and get new cards without returning home. Previously, Mexican citizens who already had a card issued in Mexico could vote even if it was expired.

Now they cannot vote with expired cards, so they must use the INE process to obtain a new voting credential.

After activating their cards, the voter will receive a ballot by regular mail in May, with postage paid to return back to Mexico to be added to the vote tally.

But the problem, says Ortega and others, arises when Mexicans attempt to activate their voting credential. The letter accompanying the document instructs them to call one of two phone numbers. Voters who have tried to call say one is not a working number and have reported difficulties in reaching the other phone number listed.

Elections officials acknowledge that Ortega, who lives in Houston, is one of many who has complained about obstacles to voting.

“We have heard a number of issues and we have been relaying their concerns and grievances immediately to the Mexican Federal Institute,” said Maciel, the advisor to the INE president.

Maciel, who has been touring cities around the U.S. on behalf of the INE to promote the vote in the Mexican presidential election, confirmed the card activation problem is at the top of the concerns he hears across the country.

This year, there are six candidates for president.

A poll conducted in February by the Mexican firm Parametría shows the leftist candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as the top contender with the support of 36 percent of voters. Obrador, who in the 2012 presidential elections received 39 percent of the votes cast by Mexicans abroad, represents a left-wing party called The National Regeneration Movement (MORENA).

Following 14 points behind in the polls this year is Ricardo Anaya, a conservative candidate working with left-leaning parties to form a coalition known as For Mexico in Front, or Por México al Frente.

The PRI candidate, Jose Antonio Meade, a member of the current president’s cabinet is in a distant fourth place with 17 percent.

The INE and Mexican consulates are extensively promoting the elections through social media accounts. During his recent tour, Maciel visited with leaders of Mexican organizations and Spanish speaking media outlets in Houston and other cities to reach out to potential voters.

César Ledesma, the INE secretary in charge of the registration system, said the government contracted with a firm earlier this month to handle calls from Mexicans abroad trying to register. He said the result has been a “surge” in increase in the number of people activating voting credentials.

Still, problems remain. Amanda Logan, a Mexican-American from Houston, said that she has never voted in a Mexican election before but decided to do it this time “to help our fellow countrymen to elect the less corrupted” candidate, she said.

She went through the same ordeal of phone calls and asked Ortega, who is her friend, for help, to no avail.

“I don’t know if I am going to have time for this,” she said. “I am very frustrated.”

Rodriguez, the Mexican consul in Houston, said officials are working to resolve the problems.

“We want everybody to vote; It's very important — it’s a right of all Mexicans,” Rodriguez said. “We tell everybody to remember the saying, ‘Si no votas, no te quejes.’”

Translated into English, it means, “If you don’t vote, don’t complain.”