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The National Electoral Institute (INE) of Mexico has prepared a document that identifies the main repercussions on the Mexican electoral system, given the effects on the electoral integrity of the aforementioned reform proposal, from a technical scope. In the attachment you can find the report made by INE (in Spanish), along with an executive summary (in English).

Introduction and contents of the reports 

This report seeks to orderly and clearly inform the members of the General Council of the National Electoral Institute (Instituto Nacional Electoral, INE), and the whole citizenry, about the consequences of the passage of the Bills to amend electoral secondary laws that were started on 6 December 2022, which are known to the public 

as “plan B” of the electoral amendment.

This report taps into the technical and operational experience of the National Electoral Institute—as the authority with the constitutional mandate to organize elections and direct democracy mechanisms—to inform about the likely consequences to the citizen's right to vote in free and authentic elections established in the Mexican Constitution.

This document is fundamentally built with the information provided by the core technical and executive departments of the National Electoral Institute, as well as with that from its decentralized bodies.

This report is by no means a summary of the Bills, whose legislative processing started last month, but a thematic analysis of the reform’s possible consequences from the standpoint of the State authority in charge of enforcing the electoral laws.

As will be seen, one characteristic of the changes approved by the Legislative Branch on 15 December 2022 (General Law on Social Outreach, and General Law on Administrative Responsibilities) and those whose passage will be finalized during the legislative period that begins on 1 February (General Law on Electoral Institutions and Procedures; General Law on Political Parties; General Law on 

Impugnation Means on the Electoral Matter; and Organic Law of the Federal Judicial 

Branch) is that—due to the absence of informed deliberations about their contents and the lack of an objective assessment of the strengths and needs of the current electoral model—they often bring along undesirable consequences for carrying out free and authentic elections, as ordered by the Constitution.

Key legal and institutional elements of the Mexican electoral system—like the National Electoral Institute’s autonomy; the territorial distribution of INE’s executive bodies across the country’s 300 electoral districts and 32 states; the electoral training and organization procedures at the base of voting and its scrupulous counting; the advancements to oppose gender-based political violence against women; the affirmative actions to enhance the political representation of traditionally marginalized people; the audit of the income and expenditures of political actors; the political 

parties’ compliance with their obligations; the citizen’s personal data protection; and the labor rights of the members of the national electoral professional service and clerical staff working at the Local Electoral Management Bodies (Organismos Públicos Locales, OPLs)—that have enabled the peaceful and periodic renewal of 

powers through free and secret voting are in jeopardy. The respect to the federal union and the free legislative configuration of the states are also affected in varying 

degrees by the electoral amendments analyzed in this report.

Contents​

I. Amendments to the operational structure and capacity of INE

II. Amendments to the electoral procedures

III. Amendments to the competition’s equity and conditions

IV. Transitional provisions

​Attachment:

1. Informe sobre Impacto Reforma Electoral_25 enero 2023  (in Spanish)

2. Report on the Impact of the Electoral Reform BRIEF (in English)

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