Mexican Expatriates Might Vote

The lower house of Congress overwhelmingly voted Tuesday to approve voting by Mexicans living abroad in the country’s 2006 presidential election.

The bill, which has not been acted on by the Senate, also provides for the registration of voters abroad and campaigning outside Mexico.

Expatriates would not be allowed to vote abroad in congressional or local elections, and the bill would not permit election ads abroad or donations from abroad for Mexican candidates.

About 4 million expatriate Mexicans already hold voter registration cards, a minority of the estimated 10 million who live abroad, almost all of them in the United States.

Mexicans living abroad were granted the right to vote and hold dual citizenship years ago, but they had been prevented from voting by the lack of an absentee ballot system.

“Congress has taken the first step to extend our democracy to Mexicans living abroad,” President Vicente Fox’s office said in a statement.

Although migrant workers are a mainstay of Mexico’s economy, some politicians are uneasy about giving them an equal say in the election, because some migrants haven’t been back to Mexico for decades.

The absentee voting would presumably be done through traditional paper balloting booths set up in the United States, considered a relatively expensive alternative to mail-in or electronic balloting.

Lawmakers from Fox’s center-right National Action Party attempted to remove some provisions of the bill, objecting to proposed increases for public funding of campaigns and warning that it may already be too late to properly register voters.