“The INE will have to do unprecedented work for which it has no experience, so the problem is not that it cannot be done, the problem is that resources are needed to do it,” explains Arturo Sánchez Gutiérrez, professor-researcher at the School of Social Sciences and Government of the Tec de Monterrey and former advisor of the INE.
Arturo Espinosa Silis, director of the consultancy Strategia Electoral, suggests that the figure is realistic for the size of the work to be undertaken to organize the first election of members of the Judiciary, and considers that not even the legislators dimensioned the size of the challenge.
“Morena is complaining about something that he was warned about during the reform process: this is going to be expensive. They did not want to evaluate how much it was going to cost, now it would seem serious to me that they do not provide the electoral body with budget sufficiency,” he warns.
Provide adjustment before defining amount
On November 8, President Claudia Sheinbaum criticized the budget amount requested by the INE for the extraordinary election of officials of the Judicial Branch. “If there is no financing for the parties or the candidates, why more (money)? Imagine more budget than in 2024,” he said when asking the deputies to review and adjust.
In this regard, the president of the Budget Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, Merilyn Gómez Pozos, from Morena, described the amount requested by the INE as “excessive.” He announced that the Lower House will review the request “with a magnifying glass” to adjust it to only what is necessary.
Also the coordinator of the federal deputies of Morena, Ricardo Monreal, anticipated a cut to the INE. “We in the Chamber are going to act responsibly and it seems like a very high amount to us. I am going to speak with the president of the INE (Guadalupe Taddei) in the coming days. (..,) surely there will be an agreement to reduce this amount that seems enormous to us.” The election of the judges is not put at risk “austerity is simply assumed (…) There will be a reduction in the amount so that the election is held, but without any excess anywhere,” he maintained.
For Espinosa Silis, the amount requested “does not seem exorbitant” when considering that a federal election costs around 9,000 million pesos, while the judicial election “has to be set up from scratch and in a very short time and with more positions to elect, it is logical”.
For his part, former electoral councilor Sánchez Gutiérrez considers that there are expenses that are irreducible such as polling stations, ballots, and training. “They are the same costs as an election like the previous one (in 2024), but to that we must add all the new features that the process brings and that will make it very complex,” he says.
With the aggravating factor, he explains, the INE will have to be busy with other things, among them the elections in Durango and Veracruz and the process of registering new political parties. “All of this means that more people have to be hired, why? Because the people who normally do things are going to be busy,” says Sánchez.
