Mexicans in U.S. to Cast Token Votes

Their votes won’t count, but millions of Mexicans living in the United States will be given a chance to cast ballots, at least symbolically, in the July 2000 Mexican presidential election.

Orange County business executive Carlos Olamendi said Monday that California-based activists met with Mexican legislators and electoral officials seeking their support for the alternative ballot. But with or without their backing, Olamendi declared, it will take place at 300 voting booths to be set up in U.S. cities where Mexicans are concentrated.

To the ire of a coalition working for the absentee ballot, the Mexican Senate let die a bill that would have allowed the vote abroad for the July 2 election. The constitution requires electoral law changes to be adopted at least one year before an election.

Mexico’s three major political parties have been trading blame in newspaper ads and public statements over who is responsible for the failure of the initiative, which was part of a complex electoral reform package.

Olamendi said that in meetings with politicians from every major party, the visiting activists also argued that migrants living in the United States should have informal representation in the Mexican Congress.

The idea calls for the appointment of one nonvoting congressional delegate from each of five states that are heavily populated by Mexicans--California, Texas, Arizona, Illinois and New York--to speak for the interests of people of Mexican descent.

Olamendi said legislators from the ruling, centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, the left-of-center Democratic Revolution Party and the right-leaning National Action Party all found the idea intriguing and agreed to mull it over.

A straw vote was held in some U.S. communities in the last presidential election in 1994. However, its organization was spotty, and it was more of a protest vote than a real attempt to stage an accurate ballot.

The symbolic vote abroad in 2000 will be open to Mexican citizens who live in the United States and have not taken American citizenship, Olamendi said. Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute puts that number at 6.2 million. Those who want to take part will need to register two months in advance.

The organizers estimate that 1 million to 1.5 million people might participate in what they say will be a carefully organized ballot, complete with observers.

Olamendi, a lawyer and business advisor in San Clemente, said the symbolic vote will show that an absentee ballot for Mexicans is practical and would not stir anti-Mexican feelings in the United States.

“This will be an important demonstration that there is no threat to Mexican sovereignty,” said Olamendi, one of four leaders of the U.S.-based vote-abroad coalition who have lobbied Mexican officials since Friday.

Primitivo Rodriguez, a Mexican who spent 17 years in the United States and supports the vote abroad, said a successful alternative ballot “could be an important step toward showing how the vote abroad is received by the Mexican government and by people in both countries.”

That would pave the way, he said, for adoption of legislation ensuring that Mexicans living abroad do get the vote in time for the 2006 presidential election.