Sunday, June 19, 2005

The Mexican post

Brian and I took a short trip to Tlaxcala and Puebla over the weekend. When Brian's updated his Flickr, I'll let you know. In the meantime, I feel compelled to mention that Tlaxcala is one of the most policed cities I've been to. The population is only 80K, but there were police on nearly every corner directing traffic (even with the traffic lights). In Oaxaca, we never saw any police on foot, and it's a much larger city. Wierd. I wish I knew why there was a difference.

Anyway. I digress.

The real point of the post was to mention plans to allow Mexicans residing in the U.S. (both legal and illegal, and yes, there are plenty of legal Mexicans there) to vote in the 2006 Presidential election by mail. The Senate and Chamber of Deputies are considering reform laws.

The headline of the article read: "Vote by mail inviable," which only seconds a sentiment expressed to me in one of my recent research interviews. I assumed someone was pointing out the poor service provided by the Mexican postal service. The exact comment made to me was, "Would you send cash using the Mexican postal service? Then, why are you going to send your vote that way?"

Well, it seems the Mexican postal service officially agrees. They claim that they would not be able to afford to handle all of the international mail sent to them from the United States, were Mexicans able to vote by mail. They also said the voting requirements requested by the IFE (Mexican voting institute) are not necessarily compatible with international postal agreements.

posted by Michelle @ 9:59 PM,

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