1.  Acknowledgements 2.  Executive Summary 3.  Introduction 4.  Chiapas 5.  Guerrero 6.  Huasteca 7.  Oaxaca 8.  Yucatán 9.  Conclusion 10. Participants 11. Appendices

The government and people of Mexico have made an impressive effort to guarantee that the upcoming elections will be free and credible. Electoral reforms have gone a long way toward ensuring that the electoral process cannot be corrupted easily by one political organization or another. IFE in particular deserves great credit for its efforts to prepare a highly accurate list of voters, to provide each one with a photo credential, to recruit and train hundreds of thousands of citizen volunteers to oversee the process of voting at local polling places, and to spread the message that the vote will be free and secret. These efforts already appear to be bearing fruit in the widespread perception by people in many places that the process of voting and tabulating the results will be done in a fair and professional manner.

Despite these advances, IFE continues to face serious limitations, including the following:

• The creation of a credible electoral system depends not just on the professionalism of the electoral organs, but on the assurance that infractions of the electoral code will be effectively prosecuted. While the FEPADE appears to display a high degree of professionalism, its resources are severely limited and it is reactive rather than proactive in pursuing electoral infractions. The process of bringing an official complaint is cumbersome, time-consuming and, for ordinary citizens, involves the often intimidating prospect of having to deal with the police and face local social censure or worse. Moreover, the Federal Electoral Tribunal recognized very few complaints in the last presidential election and we encountered little confidence that recourse to the Tribunal would be effective in deterring electoral violations.
• While campaign finance reforms represent an advance in some respects over the regulations prevailing in the United States, for instance, there remains little control over private spending and no credible framework for monitoring campaign finance violations. The law provides few sanctions, none of them involving loss of office as a result of serious violations.
• IFE has carried out extensive studies to monitor radio and TV coverage of the candidates. Nevertheless, evidence of disproportionate coverage persists and there is no recourse under the law in cases of manipulation of the media. IFE itself faced difficulties in attempting to obtain free airtime, traditionally accorded the organization, to present civic education spots to the public. In this instance, it was disturbing that the Secretaría de Gobernación refused to intervene in the decision of the Broadcasters’ Association (CIRT) regarding the matter.
• At the local level, IFE has undertaken the recruiting and training of thousands of poll workers. It has developed a sophisticated system for ensuring that impartial, trained citizens will control the polling process. The system has significant checks in the presence of registered party representatives and other observers at the polls. Nevertheless, we found in our visits to a number of states that there is still reason for concern. There are no electoral materials in indigenous languages. This represents a serious impediment to public awareness in many communities. Even where Spanish is the dominant language, it appears that IFE’s public information campaign has not reached the citizenry in some of the remoter areas. Where there are few qualified citizens, IFE has encountered numerous difficulties in locating and training volunteers. In isolated communities, or where political control has traditionally been held tightly by a few individuals, local pressures on volunteers may lead to substitutions that in effect give control of the polling process to a narrow group of citizens. Reports from a few communities indicate that the balloting there may not be secret. Given concerns about the responsiveness of the Federal Electoral Tribunal, these facts suggest reason for concern, particularly in a close race.
• In several of the states we visited, the level of militarization carried with it the possibility that many citizens would feel inhibited from voting. In indigenous communities of Chiapas where there are many communities of displaced persons we found serious concerns about the location of polling places. Many worried that the polling places were being situated in communities that were hostile to them or were far from the camps where they were staying. Others expressed the fear that military roadblocks or encampments would hamper their efforts to get to the polls election day. In some states there was concern that recent violence and the presence of large detachments of police or the military would inhibit voting.
• The biggest concern expressed by observers and members of opposition parties was the possibility that public resources would be used to sway the vote. While some such practices are part of any political campaign and represent merely "the advantages of incumbency," others are questionable or clearly illegal. In our visits to the states we heard testimony that public resources were being used in political campaigns. We also received complaints regarding pressure put directly on recipients of such resources to vote for one party or another. It was impossible for us to determine how widespread such practices are, but it was clear that poor, rural communities are particularly vulnerable to such manipulation. IFE lacks the resources to monitor misuse of public funds and the system for presenting complaints to the authorities remains weak, as noted above. Just for this reason the Congress established a Special Commission to monitor the situation, particularly in regard to the anti-poverty program PROGRESA. The Comission’s report on the use of this program in Nayarit made it clear that close monitoring was needed to prevent it from being manipulated for partisan purposes.
• The electoral laws provide for international observers under the figure of officially recognized "foreign visitors," accredited by IFE and granted special visas for the purpose of coming to understand the electoral process. Some of our delegation experienced serious difficulties in obtaining the necessary visa, despite the good offices of IFE. The leader of the delegation, Ted Lewis of Global Exchange, was barred from the country during our stay, seriously undermining the efforts of the organizers to provide us with all the facilities we needed to complete a serious study of the pre-electoral process. This delegation will be followed by others, made up of citizens of other countries interested in supporting the democratic process in Mexico. We sincerely hope that the National Institute of Immigration and the Secretary of Government will take steps to insure that future visitors are given their visas promptly and expeditiously.

We conclude that there are very serious challenges facing the process of democratization in Mexico. Nevertheless, we also found a sincere desire by many of the citizens with whom we spoke to participate in clean elections and, in many parts of the country, the real hope that the electoral process would be free and yield fair results.