Some Mexican Emigrants Blame Mexico For Low Expatriate Voter Registration

Mexicans living in New York rejoiced last year when the Mexican Congress granted them the right to vote from abroad, a hard-fought victory they claimed would provide them political clout to match their financial contributions. However, paltry voter registration levels are frustrating local community leaders, some of whom claim the Mexican government is intentionally stifling their influence on the nation's politics.

Mexican expatriates, who sent more than $15 billion home from America last year, won the vote in July after years of lobbying. Permitting emigrants to participate in Mexican presidential elections - the next will be held July 2 - follows a trend in neighboring Latin American countries with large populations in New York. In 2004, for example, the city's largest immigrant group, Dominicans, voted for the first time, using paper ballots that were sent back to Santo Domingo.

The Mexican expatriate suffrage system was created quickly and the scale of potential voters dwarfs that of other countries, at an estimated 4 million voters who have the requisite certification in America.

Last week, with just two weeks left to register, the Federal Institute of Elections in Mexico City had received only about 10,000 registrations from abroad. By comparison, for the Dominican elections, 24,000 voters registered in New York alone - and that was criticized as a small turnout.

Local Mexican leaders blamed the low response rate on a lack of planning. Some go so far as to say it was a calculated effort by the government in Mexico.

The director of the Manhattan-based advocacy group Asociacion Tepeyac, Joel Magallan, said the Mexican government had engaged in a "process to exclude the Mexicans who are abroad from Mexico." In Mexico, he said, elections are often corrupt and politicians "were afraid that if they give the right to vote abroad, we would be voting against them."

The local representative of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad, Manuel Guerrero, said politicians "are afraid we will take political power," but he said the larger problem was an overwhelmed elections agency. Six years from now, the next time Mexico is schedule to hold an election, he said, "There's going to be a large campaign to make changes."

Low registration is not the only problem plaguing the Federal Election Institute. The Mexican agency governing election fraud warned its consular representatives last week that the ballots, which will be sent in by certified mail, are vulnerable to fraud. Voters in border towns could feasibly vote twice, votes could be purchased, and the ballots could be altered in transit, the agency warned.

Despite such potential problems, a spokeswoman with the Federal Elections Institute, Pilar Alvarez, said the institute is satisfied with the results, particularly since it was given only 105 days to register voters. Moreover, she said registrations are now rolling in at the rate of nearly 400 a day, up from a handful two weeks ago. "It's not a political reason, it's technical," she said in Spanish, referring to the slow registration rate. "This is the first stage of the great transformation that Mexico is beginning."

Registration began in October, but it was only last month that the Mexican government publicized the voting, taking out full-page ads in Spanish language dailies in America and blitzing television and radio stations.

Millions of Mexicans in America lack the required voting credentials, which are issued only in Mexico. Some have had them stolen by smugglers on the border, some left the country before receiving them, and others left them behind in Mexico or lost them, Ms. Alvarez said. Many local Mexicans who have the cards said they simply do not want to go through the trouble of accumulating the necessary paperwork and paying the $8 fee to send the documents by certified mail back to Mexico.

"People were telling us they never went to the post office, they don't know how to go there and ask for registered mail, they didn't know English, and they didn't know how to fill the forms," Mr. Magallan said. After he criticized the process in a Mexico City newspaper, he said the Mexican Federal Elections Institute contacted him and suggested it officially facilitate the process of sending the forms through the association.

Filimon Aranda, 34, said in Spanish that the opportunity to vote is very important to "contribute to change the country and help it improve," but he said he has not registered. Taking a break from scrubbing TriBeCa windows, Mr. Aranda said, "I don't have time."