Morena’s intention to hold a super-election in 2027 will coincide with the repeal of the mandate promoted by Mexican President, Claudia Sheinbaum, with the election of 500 federal deputies, 17 state governments, thousands of city councils and 31 local congresses, as well as second judicial elections for hundreds of positions and a possible popular consultation. In some entities, voters may have more than 10 ballots to vote on the big Election Day.
These electoral plans, embodied in an initiative by Rep. Alfonso Ramirez Cuellar (a Morenista who serves as an official close to President Claudia Sheinbaum), run counter to some of the arguments with which the government has called for consultative forums for an upcoming electoral political reform that seeks, among other things, to make a system that currently costs about 20 billion pesos a year more austere.
Ramirez Cuellar’s initiative was scheduled to be judged on Monday in the House of Representatives’ Constitutional Points Committee, and will be moved to the plenary session this week, where Morena and his PVEM and PT allies secured enough votes to approve it. But the opposition bench coordinators requested more time to analyze the issue, so the ruling was postponed.
The proposal seems simple: match the date of the possible abolition of the mandate – if it is called – with the date of the intermediate federal elections of 2027 and establish that the popular consultation – the mechanism that citizens or any of the three powers of the Union can call every year – is also held in June, and not in August, as currently planned.
Both citizen participation processes had already been tested in the previous six-year period, after former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promoted a constitutional reform that made them possible, but – at the request of the opposition – on different dates than traditional elections. The popular consultation session, which originally sought to ask citizens whether they agreed to put former presidents on trial, was held on August 1, 2021, a month after that year’s federal election. Only 6.6 million voters participated in the elections, or 7.11 percent of the total 93 million potential voters. The consultation to repeal the mandate was held on April 10, 2022 and was promoted not by López Obrador’s critics, but by his supporters, so it ended up being a confirmation rather than an impeachment. 16.5 million voters participated in the elections, equivalent to 17.7 percent of those registered.
Neither training reached the minimum 40% participation required to be binding, so they became symbolic events that Morena and Amlo exploited to mobilize their bases.
In both cases, the National Electoral Institute requested additional resources from the House of Representatives to organize the process: P1.5 billion for popular consultation and P3.8 billion for the abolition of the mandate. But the Council only authorized 528 million for consultations and 1,500 million for cancellation, and thus the 160,000 polling stations required by law to cover all electoral divisions were not installed. Rather, only 57,000 receiving tables were installed, which could have affected the decrease in participation.
One of the arguments underlying Ramírez Cuellar’s initiative is precisely the saving that would mean concentrating citizen participation practices in federal and local elections, currently held in single polling stations, where it would be sufficient to add ballots for popular consultation and abolish the mandate.
“With clear legal frameworks, holding votes for repeal processes simultaneously with other electoral processes could increase citizen participation, save logistical and financial resources, reduce electoral fatigue among citizens and improve transparency and citizen control over said political processes. This would undoubtedly enrich this democratic practice. In the case of popular consultations, which could be held every year, unifying the two days on the same date would facilitate logistical organization, improve public resources and encourage greater citizen participation, by reducing the scattering of electoral events in the calendar.” Opinion awaits discussion.
If the initiative succeeds, the supreme elections will be held on Sunday, June 6, 2027 and will coincide with five processes currently stipulated in the Constitution: the renewal of the House of Representatives, and gubernatorial elections in 17 states (Aguascalientes, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Campeche, Chihuahua, Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Nayarit, Nuevo León, Queretaro, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosi, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas), local congressional elections in all states except Coahuila, city council renewal elections in 30 entities (all except Durango and Veracruz) and judicial elections in all federal and local districts and districts not renewed in 2025.
Elections of these dimensions will put the electoral system to the test, today in the crosshairs of the reform process led by Pablo Gomez, who has warned that Morena and his allies will use their majority to approve changes aimed at downsizing the current national election system, which includes national elections (with decentralized offices throughout the country), 32 general local electoral authorities (OPLE), an electoral tribunal, the judicial branch of the federation (TEPJF) and 32 state courts. Elections.
“The disappearance of the PLO is very clear, and no one can say what it aims at,” Pablo Gomez warned in an interview with El Pais newspaper last August. “The state courts do not resolve any issue, everything goes to the electoral court. It is better to create a two-tier system. There are 300 local councils, which we must put an end to.”
Claudia Sheinbaum is on the ballot
But the 2027 super election dilemma is not just technical or financing, it is political, as a repeal measure in that year and not in April 2028 as current law stipulates, would put President Claudia Sheinbaum on the ballot for the midterm elections.
This may be the goal of the initiative presented by Alfonso Ramirez Cuellar last September: to bet on Sheinbaum’s strength in the opinion polls, which give him approval levels of up to 70%, in contrast to the erosion that Morena has suffered after a year of scandals involving figures such as Adan Augusto Lopez, Gerardo Fernandez Noronha, Andres Manuel Lopez Beltran (“Andy”), Cuauhtemoc Blanco and some acting governors.
Some specialists believe that agreeing to appointments is a trap that endangers the electoral system and democracy itself. “It is not just an event, but an initiative that has the approval of those who, under the pretext of being evaluated and validated by the people, seek to use their influence, power and state resources to influence the 2027 elections,” says former executive secretary of the National Electoral Institute, Edmundo Jacobo Molina.
With 15 years of experience heading the Executive Secretariat of the National Electoral Institute – the most important technical area of the electoral system -, Molina asserts that the combination of the abolition of the mandate, federal and local elections, and the judicial elections of 2027, would mean a point of no return in Morenista’s intention to perpetuate himself in power.
For his part, Representative German Martinez, a member of the parliamentary group of the National Action Party, said that the opposition is not afraid of President Sheinbaum’s presence on the ballot in 2027, as long as there are clear rules that guarantee the holding of free and fair elections, which will depend on the electoral reform that the ruling majority will impose in 2026.
“This Ramírez Cuellar initiative is a pillar of Pablo Gómez’s reform, which shows an internal struggle. But what we demand, far from this struggle, is to have electoral rules that provide guarantees for an impartial authority. We are not afraid of voting and the free and authentic expression of citizens, nothing more than that we want free and real elections, free of crime and public money, without adapting social programmes. Taking money from the National Electoral Institution and holding major elections is a contradiction. The National Action Party member said in an interview with the newspaper El Pais: “She is not afraid of elections, she is afraid of emulation.”
On the other hand, Ramirez Cuellar emphasizes that his initiative is part of a comprehensive package of reforms that seek to strengthen accountability in Mexico and which include the abolition of jurisdiction, the rebuilding of the audit body, and the reform of the Federal Congress and the federal public administration. The opinion discussion on this initiative, which was scheduled to be held today, Monday, was postponed indefinitely at the request of the opposition, at a meeting of the Political Coordination Body, in which Morino Coordinator Ricardo Monreal agreed to give more time to the discussion.
About The Author
