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Mexicoportal |
Elections in Mexico are held for officials at federal, state, and municipal levels. At the federal level, the nation's head of state, the president, is directly elected with the popular vote by all Mexican citizens for a six-year non-renewable term. All members of the bicameral federal legislature, the Congress of the Union, are also elected by all Mexican citizens. At the state level, each state has an elective governor and unicameral congress. At the municipal level, the municipal presidents are also elected by their citizens. Since 2016, a constitutional amendment has designed Mexico City to be a fully autonomous entity on par with the states. Its city mayor, city congress, and borough mayors are elected by their citizens in a similar fashion to those states.
Mexican citizens over 18 years of age are eligible to vote in all Mexican elections. In order to carry the ballot, the citizen should first request a Voting Credential (Spanish : Credencial para Votar), a plastic card issues by the National Electoral Institute (Spanish : Instituto Nacional Electoral, INE) of the federal government. [1]
To receive Voting Credential, the citizen need:
Mexico is a federal republic, the electoral system is regulated by the Constitution of Mexico as well as the constitutions of the 32 federative entities. These constitutions have separation of powers into three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. The heads of executive and all members of legislature are open to for elections by the citizens. Officials of the judiciary are not open for election. [2]
The heads of government executive bodies are commonly directly elected with the popular vote for a six-year term. Terms of elected executives are non-renewable, seeking to be reelected is forbidden by the constitutions. The executive election is held through voting on a single plurality voting ballot for the candidate, and the winner is decided by first-past-the-post voting rule.
The members of the legislatures are commonly directly elected with the popular vote for a three-year (most common) or a six-year (federal senate) term. There are usually term limits placed on members of the legislatures. Most legislative elections have mixed electoral systems. The votes are counted toward both candidates and political parties through 1-ballot mixed single voteing or 2-ballot parallel voting. The winners are decided by a hybrid across first-past-the-post voting (single-member district), party-list proportional representation, and/or mixed-member proportional representation.
Mexico has a multi-party system, with three dominant political parties. Prior to 2000 Mexico had a dominant-party system under the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and a number of smaller opposition parties. Alliances and coalitions are common: normally, they are local (state) affairs and involve one of the big three and any number of minor parties, though in extraordinary occasions two of the big three will ally themselves against the third (e.g., 2003 Colima state election or 2004 Chihuahua state election). [3]
Article 2 of the Constitution of Mexico provides for the self-government of indigenous communities according to their "traditional customs" (Spanish : sistema de usos y costumbres). [4] This has resulted in several indigenous communities in Mexico maintaining local systems, notably those of Cherán, and areas under Councils of Good Government control.
According to the Constitution of Mexico, several important officials of the federal government of Mexico (Spanish : Gobierno federal de México or Poderes de la Unión) shall be elected by all Mexican citizens, including the president of Mexico who serves as the head of state and head of government, as well as all members of the bicameral Congress of the Union that consists of Chamber of Deputies and Senate of the Republic.
Under the current Mexican electoral system, the president of Mexico is directly elected for a six-year non-renewable term. The 128 senators are elected for a six-year term. The 500 deputies are elected for a three-year term. The elections are synchronized that Mexican citizens elect the president, senators, and deputies at once every six years. A midterm election for the deputies will happen in the mid point of the six-year period. Federal elections are usually held in early June, July, or August of the year.
The last general election was held on 2 June 2024 for presidential, senate, and chamber of deputies elections. The next chamber of deputies election are expected to be held in 2027; while the next presidential election and senate election are expected to be held in 2030.
The president of Mexico (Spanish : Presidente de México) is elected for a six-year term by direct election of all Mexican citizens. The candidate who wins a plurality of votes is elected president. No president can serve more than a single term in office, therefore every presidential election in Mexico is a non-incumbent election. [2]
Mexico does not have an office of vice president.
Candidates for president must be at least 35 years old. They must be Mexican citizens by birth, as must one of their parents. They must have been residents of Mexico for at least 20 years. They also cannot have been either the governor of a state or the chief of government of Mexico City for six months prior to the election. [5]
The Congress of the Union (Spanish : Congreso de la Unión) is composed of two chambers: Chamber of Deputies and Senate of the Republic.
The Chamber of Deputies (Spanish : Cámara de Diputados) has 500 deputies (Spanish : diputados). The deputies are elected to a three-year term through a 2-ballot parallel voting system. [2] [6] Deputies may serve up to four consecutive terms. [5]
To be eligible to place candidates in the multi-seat districts a party must have candidates in at least 200 of the 300 single-seat districts and must win at least 2% of the vote in those elections. The 200 PR-seats are distributed based on the percentage of the total national votes earned by each party without taking into account the 300 plurality-seats (parallel voting). However, since 1996, a party cannot get more seats overall than 8% above its result nationally (i.e., to win 50% of the legislative seats, a party must win at least 42% of the vote nationwide). There are three exceptions on this rule: first, a party can only lose PR-seats due to this rule (and no plurality-seats); second, a party can never get more than 300 seats overall (even if it has more than 52% of the vote nationally); and third, a party can exceed this 8% rule if it wins the seats in the single-member districts. [2]
The Senate of the Republic (Spanish : Senado de la República), or Chamber of Senators (Spanish : Cámara de Senadores), has 128 senators (Spanish : senadores). The senators are elected to a six-year term through a 1-ballot mixed single vote system, where the single party-list vote is counted in the following two ways. [2] [6] Senators may run for two consecutive terms. [5]
Candidates for the Chamber of Senators must be registered voters at least 25 years old. They also must have been born in, or been residents of the states they are running in for at least six months. [5]
Electoral magistrates, the Secretary of the Electoral Tribunal, and the Executive Secretary and Executive Director of the INE must separate themselves from their positions for at least three years before seeking legislative office. [7]
Mexico has 32 federative entity (Spanish : entidades federativas) which includes 31 states and Mexico City. Each federative entity elects its own head of executive (governor or head of government) and all members of legislature (congress).
The leader of a federative entity is officially named governor (Spanish : gobernador) for a Mexican state, and head of government (Spanish : Jefe/Jefa de Gobierno) for Mexico City. These officials are elected for a six-year non-renewable term by the citizens of that federative entity.
To be a governor or head of government:
Each federative entity has a unicameral legislature officially named congress (Spanish : congreso). Members of the congresses are called deputies (Spanish : diputados). All seats of the congress are elected to three-year terms in a mixed electoral system. Deputies can serve up to four consecutive terms.
For example, there are 75 seats in the Congress of the State of México. Forty-five seats are apportioned in direct elections in single-member districts and 30 are apportioned via proportional appointments. Political parties nominate their candidates for proportional appointments before the election. For a party to be eligible for proportional-appointment seats they must run candidates in at least 30 districts and receive at least 3% of the vote throughout the state.
Similar to the federal Chamber of Deputies, a party cannot have more than 8% more seats in the legislature than their percentage of state-wide votes (e.g., to win 50% of the legislative seats, a party must win at least 42% of the vote statewide) unless that excess was earned in the direct elections.
To be a deputy of the congress:
Under the current administrative divisions of Mexico, states are divided into municipalities and Mexico City is divided into boroughs. The autonomy of these divisions are protected by the Constitution of Mexico. Leaders of these divisions, called municipal presidents (Spanish : presidentes municipales) or borough mayors (Spanish : alcaldes), are directly elected for a six-year non-renewable term. As of March 2024, there are 2,460 municipalities and the 16 boroughs, this constitutes 2476 electoral territorial units. [8]
This section needs to be updated.(November 2024) |
The politics of Mexico function within the framework of a federal presidential representative democratic republic whose government is based on a multi-party congressional system, where the President of Mexico is both head of state and head of government. The federal government represents the United Mexican States. It is divided into three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial, established by the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States, published in 1917. The constituent states of the federation must also have a republican government based on a congressional system established by their respective constitutions.
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. Members of parliament typically form parliamentary groups, sometimes called caucuses, with members of the same political party. Many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members often have a different title. The terms congressman and deputy are equivalent terms used in other jurisdictions.
The Senate is the upper house of the Cortes Generales, which along with the Congress of Deputies – the lower chamber – comprises the Parliament of the Kingdom of Spain. The Senate meets in the Palace of the Senate in Madrid. The presiding officer of the Senate is the president of the Senate, who is elected by the members at the first sitting after each national election.
The Congress of the Union, formally known as the General Congress of the United Mexican States, is the legislature of the federal government of Mexico. It consists of two chambers: the Senate of the Republic and the Chamber of Deputies. Its 628 members meet in Mexico City.
The Chamber of Deputies is the lower house of the Congress of the Union, the bicameral parliament of Mexico. The other chamber is the Senate. The structure and responsibilities of both chambers of Congress are defined in Articles 50 to 70 of the Constitution.
The Senate of the Republic, constitutionally the Chamber of Senators of the Honorable Congress of the Union, is the upper house of Mexico's bicameral Congress. It currently consists of 128 members, who serve six-year terms.
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The National Congress is the legislative body of Brazil's federal government. Unlike the state legislative assemblies and municipal chambers, the Congress is bicameral, composed of the Federal Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The Congress meets annually in Brasília from 2 February to 22 December, with a mid-term break taking place between 17 July and 1 August.
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The Federal Senate is the upper house of the National Congress of Brazil. When created under the Imperial Constitution in 1824, it was based on the House of Lords of the British Parliament, but since the Proclamation of the Republic in 1889 and under the first republican Constitution the Federal Senate has resembled the United States Senate.
Electoral districts go by different names depending on the country and the office being elected.
The Federal Government of Mexico is the national government of the United Mexican States, the central government established by its constitution to share sovereignty over the republic with the governments of the 31 individual Mexican states, and to represent such governments before international bodies such as the United Nations.
General elections were held in Dominican Republic on 15 May 2016 to elect a president, vice-president and the Congress, as well as 20 deputies to the Central American Parliament, municipal councils, mayors and vice mayors. On 15 May 2015 Roberto Rosario, president of the Central Electoral Board, said that there would be about 4,300 seats up for election in the "most complex elections in history".
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The National Brazilian Congress has a bicameral system, with the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate. Women are extremely underrepresented in both parts of the Congress. Between 1983 and 2015 women only made up on average 7.2% of seats in the Senate, and 6.2% of seats in the Chamber of Deputies. While the majority of seats on both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies were held by male politicians.
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