Absentee voting cited as success in Mexico
The most important accomplishment of Mexico’s Congress has been its decision to allow absentee voting in next year’s presidential election, a congressional leader said at an appearance in San Diego last week.
Manlio Fabio Beltrones, a Sonora congressman who served as governor of the border state from 1991 to 1997, said while the absentee voting law is “not the perfect system,” it will allow all Mexicans to vote, no matter where they live.
“At last, we are together again,” he said.
He said absentee voting, to be done by mail, may not have much effect on the 2006 election, but likely will have a greater impact in the 2009 midterm elections and the 2012 presidential vote.
Beltrones, a top coordinator in Congress for the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, spoke about governance in Mexico on Thursday at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego.
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Mexico uses athletes to promote absentee vote registration for 2006 elections
Mexican electoral officials announced on Friday that they have launched a campaign featuring well-known professional athletes to promote registration for absentee ballots by Mexican living abroad.
The July 2, 2006 elections will be the first time that Mexicans abroad will be able to request absentee ballots for a federal election; to do so, they must submit request forms by Jan. 15.
As part of the program, infielder Jorge Cantu of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Florida Marlins pitcher Ismael Valdes and San Diego Padres catcher Ramon Hernandez paid a visit
México prepares for voting by holiday visitors
Mexican authorities are setting up special voter registration centers for Mexicans who live abroad but return to their home country for the holidays, as part of the first mass effort to distribute absentee ballots for presidential elections, officials said last Wednesday.
The 15 centers will be located mainly in border cities, as well as in three main urban centers -- México City, Guadalajara and Monterrey.
The Federal Electoral Institute has already opened the first two centers in the border city of Mexicali and in Guadalajara, and plan to have the others up and running soon.
The
Mexico's Absentee Total Low
Fewer than 57,000 Mexican migrants have requested absentee ballots for the presidential election, officials said Thursday — a showing many say reflects serious flaws in the effort to include millions living abroad.
Migrants have argued that they received little information about the program. They also complained that a requirement forcing them to register for a voting card in Mexico negated the benefit of being able to cast a vote from outside the country.
Many of the estimated 4 million registered Mexican voters living abroad, mainly in the United States, are undocumented and don't want to return to
MEXICO CITY — Legislators will vote next week on whether to allow Mexicans living abroad to cast ballots in the 2006 presidential election, after saying Friday that they had split on the issue with less than a week left to approve the bill.
The dispute threatens to again quash the voting rights of an estimated 11 million migrants, most in the U.S., and exposes the long-standing electoral fault lines in a country where one-tenth of the population has emigrated to find work.
The former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, voted Thursday in a lower-house committee to modify
Mexico's expatriate voting plan a flop so far
A drive to get millions of Mexican immigrants in the United States to vote in the 2006 presidential election has fallen flat so far, with just 2,213 registered to vote, electoral officials said on Thursday.
The Mexican Congress approved an expatriate voting plan in June giving Mexican expatriates, who send billions of dollars home each year in remittances, the right to a voice in an election at home for the first time.
Activists predicted then that some 500,000 Mexican residents abroad would vote in next July's poll.
But nearly two months after
Mexico Readies First-Ever Absentee Ballot
Mexico Launches Effort to Register Migrants for First-Ever Absentee Balloting
A small army of electoral workers carrying absentee ballot registration forms was deployed Wednesday in airports, land crossings and customs checkpoints along Mexico's border with the United States.
Their mission is to get the thousands of migrants returning home for the holidays to register for the nation's first absentee ballot. Votes from millions of Mexicans living abroad, mostly in the United States, could swing July's presidential election.
Some Mexican migrants in the United States, however, complain a lack of information has made registration confusing and difficult. Many
Mexico promotes absentee ballot on U.S. TV
Mexico's electoral institute will use a 21-hour show on U.S. television on Wednesday to convince more Mexicans living north of the border to vote in next year's presidential election.
The July election will be the first time Mexicans living abroad will be allowed to cast absentee ballots, but as of November 22, only a little over 2,000 of 11 million Mexicans living outside their country had applied to mail in their vote.
The television show will be broadcast by Spanish-language network Univision in 24 U.S. cities, including New York; Miami, Florida; Houston, Texas; and Los Angeles,
Cuban Educational Program a Success in Mexico
Over 266,000 Mexicans have been taught to read and write using the Cuban method "Yo si puedo"(Yes, I can), which is currently being implemented in 10 municipalities of that country.
According to Granma newspaper, some 10,500 young voluntary twelfth graders under the supervision of Cuban professors give the classes.
On a visit to Cuba, at the beginning of 2005, the governor of Michoacan, Lazaro Cardenas, praised the Cuban methodology, which has already eliminated illiteracy in some regions.
Thanks to the 3-year-old "Yo si puedo" project, more than one million people were taught to read and
T-shirt said to be offensive to Mexico
The Urban Outfitters retail chain is once again upsetting some people with a T-shirt it's selling.
The shirt reads: "New Mexico, Cleaner than Regular Mexico."
An official with the Anti-Defamation League wants the retailer to stop selling the shirt -- because it suggests that "Mexico is a dirty place."
Urban Outfitters has run into similar controversy before. Two years ago, it stopped selling a game called "Ghettopoly" after black civil rights leaders protested. Last year, it stopped sales of a T-shirt that read, "Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl," surrounded by dollar signs. The Anti-Defamation League objected to
Casa de los Azulejos (House of Tiles)
This "house of the squares" is the colonial invaluable stone Mexiko-Citys most invaluable and popular points of meeting. Covered in the admirable squares blau-und-weissen, it completion date of the 1500s, when he lowers for the impulse of account that by Orizaba was established. Originally built as a palace for the Marques del Valle de Orizaba, the tiles (azulejos) on the façade date back to the 18th century, and are said to be mostly Chinese in origin. The interior is quite stunning: a Moorish patio and a mural by Orozco are just two of
