When Mexicans go to the polls next year to elect their judges for the first time, they face a unique and difficult task.
In the capital of Mexico City, voters will have to choose judges for more than 150 positions, including the Supreme Court, from a list of 1,000 that most people have never heard of. For each of the 150 vacancies, a space will be allocated for voters to write up to 10 candidates.
Without temporary solutions such as dividing the judges into districts, it could take 45 minutes to fill out the ballot papers, one analyst estimated. Even with such amendments, voters will still have to choose from many unusual names.
“It’s impossible,” said Jaime Olaiz-González, a professor of constitutional theory at Mexico’s Universidad Panamericana. “No country, even the most backward ones, has ever proposed a plan like this.” The vote will be the result of a campaign by the country’s nationalist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to radically change the branch of government that has always irritated him by blocking his plans.
Here’s another from Christine Murray from the FT. Garrett Jones…call!
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