Mexico OKs absentee voting for citizens abroad

MEXICO CITY — Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved on Tuesday a law allowing millions of Mexicans living abroad to vote by mail in next year's presidential election — a measure that could reshape the country's leadership race.

To chants of "Viva Mexico," the lower house of Congress passed an absentee voting proposal 455-6 with six abstentions. The bill was already approved by Mexico's Senate and now only needs to signed by President Vicente Fox to become law— something he has promised to do.

As lawmakers cast votes on the electronic board, dozens of visiting migrants waved flags and sang the Mexican national anthem.

President Vicente Fox, traveling in Belize, called the measure's approval something "all of Mexico should celebrate."

"It brings justice to many Mexicans," Fox said, adding that migrants overseas "are informed, have access to international information . . . and will be a great addition, with their decisions and their ideas" to the electoral process.

An estimated 11 million Mexicans, as much as 14 percent of the country's electorate, live overseas, most in the United States. Expatriates are legally allowed to vote and hold dual citizenship but have been effectively barred from participating in elections because of the lack of an absentee ballot system.

When Fox ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, during elections in 2000, thousands of Mexicans crossed from the United States into their homeland to seek special voting booths set up along the border — many of which soon ran out of ballots.

It was not clear which parties might benefit from the migrant voting.

PRI, which controls the largest bloc of seats in Congress, had long been rumored to fear that migrants would vote against it because they were forced to leave the country for lack of work during its rule. It is the only party so far to have elected a migrant to Congress, however.

The support came despite fears expressed by members of all major political parties that the country's notoriously slow and corrupt postal service will handle mailing out ballots.

"Voting by mail has its advantages and disadvantages, but it is the consensus that has been agreed upon," said Juan Jose Garcia of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party.