Thousands of Mexicans in the US are trying to vote this Sunday in their country’s elections, in a day full of technical problems in the system and endless lines lasting several hours at the consulates in cities like Washington, Los Angeles or New York.
The 20 consulates where you can vote in the United States opened their doors this morning at the same time as they did in Mexico (at 2:00 p.m. GMT). In Washington DC they opened at 10:00 local time, but several hours before there were dozens of citizens waiting on the street.
Four hours later, when the line grew to more than a thousand people and went around several streets, only about 150 people had been able to vote in one of the five electronic ballot boxes installed, explained Ricardo Sánchez, liaison for the National Electoral Institute (INE). ) in the American capital.
The reason, he points out, is that the newly launched electronic system, with tablets as the only option to vote, slows down the process. “There are people, many of them older people, who don’t know how to use cell phones and it takes a long time because there are a lot of votes and a lot to select,” he explains.
In addition to the elections for the Presidency, today all members of the Senate are being renewed and at the local level there are elections in nine states.
According to the INE, 258,461 people will be able to vote from abroad in these elections, the largest in history, with 97 million people called to the polls.
They have previously been able to do so by mail or online, but many of them chose to do so at 23 consular offices that were adopted for this purpose (20 in the US and one in Montreal, Paris and Madrid).
In 20 of them, Sánchez details, the electronic ballot box system was installed for the first time, responsible for slowing down the process. “Citizens are still not used to this,” he says.
With three hours left before the closing of the nine voting stations installed in the Los Angeles consulate, where 1,362 people were registered to vote, only 544 had voted, according to Leobardo Mendoza, INE liaison in that California city.
“The voting that is carried out in the consulates is not through a printed ballot and a ballot box, but in electronic ballot boxes that imply that citizens have to be using an electronic device and most of those who have come are older adults who They lack those digital skills,” he explained.
One of those who managed to vote was Antonio Domínguez, 95 years old, who arrived at 8:00 am local time and managed to enter at 11:00 am to vote. “Unfortunately everything is very disorganized, it is a shame that as Mexicans and the INE representatives could not plan this,” he denounced.
You may be interested: Mexican women are ‘proud’ to vote for the country’s first president
Poor organization at the consulate to cast votes for Mexicans in the US
Many of those present also complain about the organizational chaos, since when people arrive they do not know where the line is for people already registered to vote (390 in Washington) and the line for unregistered people.
“There are many of us, but there is a lack of organization. There are only five computers when there are a lot of people outside, more than 1,000 people. When we arrived we did not find the line in which we had to form, there is a lot of misinformation,” says Tamara, a voter originally from Mexico City, a few minutes before finally reaching the polling station after several hours of waiting.
At his side is Fernanda, 41 years old from Querétaro, who has been there for 4 hours but does not give up: “Yes, I want my vote to come in and it is worth the wait and for the parties to hear that we are willing to wait so many hours.” , it states.
For Fabiola, 37 years old and from Guanajuato, the important thing today is not the wait. “It may be more important that they have managed everything so that we can exercise our vote abroad, that may be more than waiting a few hours,” she says.
To liven up the wait, in the street many of those present sing songs and play “Cielito Lindo” or “Mexico Lindo y Dear,” while they applaud those who leave the consulate with a thumbs up after having managed to vote.
With information from EFE
