When Mexico joined NAFTA in 1994, it was way more developed than China. If Mexico had fully opened its economy to grow at only 1/4 China's rate, Mexico's GDP/capita would today rival that of France. Mexico needs more modernity. Lopez Obrador is returning to the authoritarian past

In the middle of last night, Mexican president Lopez Obrador ratified his bill to wreck Mexico's elections body, the INE. The courts will review, but for now, Mexico's election system is in chaos. 

Through most of the 20th century, Mexican elections were run by officials answerable to the Mexican president. The president told the officials the result he wanted. They delivered it.

Under Trump and now under Biden, the United States has taken a highly transactional approach to Lopez Obrador. The US listed deliverables; Lopez Obrador has often delivered. In return, the US has looked away as Lopez Obrador has subverted democracy and corrupted the state.

The transactional approach is now dangerously failing. The supreme US interest is a stable, peaceful, prosperous Mexico. Everything else is secondary - important also, but not a substitute for the supreme goal of the success of Mexican state and society.

It would be unwise to overstate what the US can immediately do. Overt American hostility to his rule will provide a resource for the wily and still-popular Lopez Obrador to exploit for his own sinister ends. The US should not let itself become the story here.

But neither can the US be indifferent. The two societies interpenetrate in so many ways, more so now than ever before. Mexico's troubles are America's troubles, inescapably and intimately. Both democracies are being tested, severely. They need to support each other.

 

A rebuttal to the claim by Lopez Obrador and his supporters that they are attacking independent elections because the elections authority is "too expensive." This claim is misleading and intentionally misleading ....

It's true that the Mexican elections authority has a substantial budget, about $1 billion a year. But you need to reckon with the functions assigned to the authority to understand why it's so very very wrong to imagine this billion as any kind of improper enrichment.

The electoral authority is tasked, among other things, with operating Mexico's most important form of national ID. Back when Mexico was a one-party state, the ruling party grossly manipulated voting rolls - eliminating opposition voters, eg. To prevent any repeat, the electoral authority issues ID that Mexicans use not only to vote, but to board planes, open bank accounts, etc. Cards are issued when citizens reach voting age, are expunged at death, and must be canceled and reissued if citizens move to a new Mexican state. That costs.

Mexican elections are publicly financed - or are supposed to be, anyway. The public funds for the major parties are routed through the electoral authority, and are included in its budget. The INE is just a pass-through and auditing entity for this money.

The old one-party state used radio and TV as tools of party propaganda for itself. Mindful of this history, Mexican law strictly regulates party-political content on radio and TV. The INE has the burdensome and costly job of monitoring radio and TV to ensure compliance.

Then of course there is the cost of actually running elections. Under the old one-party state, Mexican polling places were staffed by officials answerable to the ruling party. Those same officials counted the ballots to prevent unwanted outcomes. As a counter-measure, the electoral authority recruits randomly invited citizen volunteers through a complex lottery system, then trains them to run elections, federal, state, and local too. That's a cost. The president of the INE's governing commission said that while most democratic voting systems are based on large elements of trust, the Mexican system is shaped to inoculate against a long history of distrust. It's complex, cumbersome, and therefore expensive. 

 

But let's put the cost in context: The total budget for the INE, including operating the national ID system, including funding the parties, including monitoring broadcast media for illegal party messaging, including staffing and overseeing 900+ polling places adds up to about $1 billion US per year. That $1 billion per year buys Mexico honest elections after two centuries of authoritarianism punctuated by massive violence. Meanwhile, Lopez Obrador's whimsical decision to cancel a half-built new airport for Mexico City and replace it with an remote useless alternative that whimsical airport decision cost Mexico maybe $20 billion US. (Rebuilding NY's LaGuardia from top to bottom cost $8 billion US). Lopez Obrador's culturally and environmentally catastrophic Yucatan train will cost nearly as much as his airport fiasco.