MEXICO CITY — How can Mexicans living abroad, including millions in the United States, vote in their presidential elections in the year 2000? The question spotlights a dilemma that economic globalism may pose for a country's domestic politics.
The issue grows out of a 1996 constitutional reform. Mexicans living in the United States or elsewhere abroad always had the right to vote. They just had to return to the districts where they were registered to do so. The 1996 reform allows Mexicans to vote away from their home districts, which means, for the first time, outside Mexico.
But what the reform didn't spell out was the logistics of such a precedent.
No reliable study has been made of the number of potential Mexican voters living in the United States. Estimates range from 2.5 million to 7.5 million, with one-third of them believed to be undocumented. That's the equivalent of between 5% and 15% of Mexico's 53 million registered voters. (Only Mexicans who have not taken foreign citizenship would be eligible to vote, and then only in the presidential race.)
In May, a commission of 13 experts on politics, law, information technology and demographics was formed to study the numbers and array of questions surrounding how such a vote would be accomplished and how much it would cost. Their recommendations are due in November. Then the Mexican Congress must decide whether it wants to proceed and, if so, what regulations and budget to establish.
The issue has taken on special urgency. The year 2000 will mark the first modern Mexican presidential race with true electoral competition. Recognizing this, more and more Mexicans in the United States are clamoring to vote.
The presidential race already is heating up. The campaign seems sure to include at least three, maybe four strong candidates. Conceivably, a contender could win with only one-third of the vote, with the others trailing by low single digits. So Mexicans voting in the United States could determine the outcome.
In such a case, the winner would likely be an opposition-party candidate. Studies, polls and symbolic votes dating back to 1981 show that immigrants in the United States would vote strongly against the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the party that has dominated Mexico's politics for 69 years.
