Fabiola Martinez and Lilian Hernandez
The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, August 29, 2024, p. 11
Upon consummating the 2023-2024 federal electoral process, the upper chamber of the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Branch of the Federation (TEPJF) confirmed by majority (four votes to one) the allocation of proportional representation legislators that gives Morena and its allies 364 of 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, a comfortable qualified majority to approve constitutional reforms.
The resolution, which is final and unappealable, left Morena three seats away from achieving that goal in the Senate.
In a session of almost four hours, the court resolved 8,528 challenges, although through different channels it had received an unprecedented avalanche of 13,513, most of them against the overrepresentation
and transfer of votes in favor of the cherry party and its allies.
With nuances, except for the magistrate Janine Otálora, Mónica Soto, Felipe de la Mata, Felipe Fuentes and Reyes Rodríguez declared unfounded the allegations of three opposition parties (PRI, PAN and MC) and of individuals. The judges conceded that the electoral system can be modified because it presents non-malignant distortions
, inconsistencies
and deficiencies
but the changes would have to be made in view of the next elections, in 2027.
De la Mata, the rapporteur for central issues, explained that based on the mixed system (300% relative majority defined at the polls and 200% proportional representation), it is not valid to say that if a coalition obtained 54.6 percent of the votes it would get the same proportion of seats in the Chamber of Deputies.
The rules of the system establish that it is legally valid for each party to be overrepresented by eight points in relation to the percentage of the national vote. Therefore, he considered, the protesters based their arguments on false premises: Whether we like it or not, our current model is not one of pure proportionality, but rather a mixed one.
said.
Can it be changed by 2027? Certainly yes, but until then, as long as the Constitution, the law and precedents are not modified, the duty of the electoral authorities is to apply the current rules of the game.
; level playing field, he warned.
De la Mata and the president of the TEPJF, Mónica Soto, recalled that the formula for assigning plurinominal seats is in the Constitution and its limits date back to 1996, based on the votes obtained by party, not by coalition.
This formula has benefited various political forces at times, so the Constitution cannot be interpreted differently just because of the discontent of one contender, they explained.
