At a registration drive in Pilsen, Ill., radio host Javier Salas tried to energize his countrymen about their historic opportunity to vote in Chicago for their homeland’s next president. “Let’s hear it!” he shouted into his microphone Thursday. “Viva Mexico!” But Salas later admitted that few are tuning in to that message: Three days before the registration deadline, it appears that the widely heralded debut of Mexican expatriate voting has fizzled.
Since registration started in October, only a little more than 15,000 Mexicans in the United States have registered to vote by mail in the July presidential election, of an estimated 4 million eligible voters.
When the Mexican Congress approved the plan last year, organizers predicted a turnout of about 300,000 voters.
With time running out to register, officials and activists in Chicago, home to the nation’s second-largest Mexican community, organized live radio broadcasts and registration drives at churches, libraries and banks this week. The Mexican government even enlisted Los Tigres del Norte, a popular norteno band, to tape American TV spots in recent weeks urging Mexicans to register.
It’s possible that many would-be voters are waiting until the last minute, election officials say, or that the final publicity push will create some momentum.
But for now, an experiment billed as a celebration of Mexican democracy has devolved into finger-pointing on both sides of the border, while casting doubts about the commitment of immigrants to their homeland.
No one seems happy with the process, which required immigrants to register by paid certified mail and travel to Mexico to obtain electoral cards, effectively shutting out undocumented immigrants who cannot easily go home.
“This has all been a failure,” grumbled activist Oscar Tellez of the Chicago-based United Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
“It is better to have no vote than this turnout.” The hand-wringing has spread to Mexico, where lawmakers and pundits have questioned whether it is worth the government’s expense to organize expatriate voting when so few signed up. The Federal Electoral Institute has spent $10 million on organizing and promoting the vote.
Both election organizers and immigrant activists have been placed on the defensive as they acknowledged shortcomings but vowed to do better in the future.
The Federal Electoral Institute in Mexico “has done all that is within its power. But we also have to be self-critical,” said Patricio Ballados, in charge of the overseas voting for the agency in Mexico. “We’ve learned a lot of things. Why? Because this is the first time we are doing it.” Salas predicted that Mexicans back home would question the commitment of immigrants.
Primitivo Rodriguez, an immigrant advocate in Mexico City who promoted the initiative for years, said critics in Mexico are already calling pro-vote activists “demagogues” for being out of touch with the immigrant community and promising more than they could deliver.
Rodriguez acknowledged that they fell short of expectations.
“You can’t put together a football team in 3 1/2 months, not even a mariachi band, much less an election abroad, in five continents and every state of the (American) union,” he said.
He blames the cumbersome rules on Mexicans’ “deep distrust” of elections, which have a checkered history in Mexico. That attitude may also account for some of the reluctance to participate.
Jorge Santibanez, president of the Colegio de la Frontera Norte en Tijuana, said the high expectations were unrealistic, given that even Mexicans at home do not see voting as an answer to their problems.
Santibanez did not think Congress would abandon the idea in future elections, but predicted “a lot of noise in the debate” after final registration numbers are compiled.
Sabot Sanchez Careno, a senator with the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which resisted expatriate voting during its 70-year hold on power that ended in 2000, agreed that some lawmakers will argue against future expatriate voting, because of the low turnout and high costs. But he expressed the belief that “we are on the correct road.” (EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE) Election officials said they expected final registration totals by the end of the month, adding that they were hopeful that many Mexicans were merely waiting until the last minute.
A late surge seemed to be occurring. A Mexican immigrant group known as CONFEMEX processed 265 applications Thursday at Chicago’s Casa Michoacan, which typically had seen only half a dozen a day. IFE officials said they received about 1,400 registration forms Tuesday, the highest-single day total so far.
Casa Michoacan will offer assistance again Friday and Saturday. The Mexican-American Immigrant Network and Institute for Mexicans Abroad announced similar workshops all day Friday and Saturday morning at Second Federal Savings branches in Chicago, Cicero and Aurora.
Many longtime supporters of expatriate voting were urging critics to look past the short-term disappointments, saying the plan was an investment in democracy.
Jose Luis Gutierrez, president of a federation of Michoacan natives in Chicago, said even one overseas vote was better than none, noting that the exercise would make Mexicans more politically active in both countries. Right on cue, a voter who had just registered tapped Gutierrez on the shoulder and asked about becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen.
“See what I mean?” Gutierrez said. “We are learning. We are learning how to speak our minds. This is the awakening of a new community, one that is binational, active here and there.” Roberto Martinez, 38, a Chicago cook who registered Thursday, said he has heard his friends complain about the flaws in the election process. Many are so frustrated that they are sitting out the election.
Not Martinez.
“This is a start. Next time, it will be even better,” Martinez said. “You can’t say that it doesn’t matter what happens in Mexico. If things were better there, we wouldn’t have to come here.”
