Mexico's judicial election turnout likely around 13%, electoral authority says
MEXICO CITY, June 2 (Reuters) - Mexico's INE electoral authority said on Monday that turnout for Sunday's judicial election was likely between 12.57% and 13.32%, adding that thousands of official across the country are working to "give certainty" to the votes citizens cast in the ballot.
Counting is set to conclude on June 15, but INE officials estimated the turnout using a calculation based on several samples across the country.
Mexicans had a day earlier voted in the country's first ever judicial elections to elect 2,600 judges and magistrates, including all Supreme Court justices, but pollsters had warned of poor turnout over boycott calls by the opposition and the complexity of voting for a large number of candidates.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
5 hours ago
- BBC News
Mexico election: Indigenous lawyer Hugo Aguilar leads race for chief justice
An indigenous lawyer, Hugo Aguilar, looks set to become Mexico's new chief justice following Sunday's ground-breaking judicial were asked to choose the country's entire judiciary by direct ballot for the first time after a radical reform introduced by the governing Morena almost all the votes for the Supreme Court counted, Mr Aguilar was in the lead for the top Claudia Sheinbaum declared the elections a success, even though turnout was low at around 13%. Electoral authorities said Mr Aguilar, who is a member of the Mixtec indigenous group, was ahead of Lenia Batres, the candidate who had the backing of the governing Morena party. Hugo Aguilar has long campaigned for the rights of Mexico's indigenous groups, which make up almost 20% of the population according to the 2020 census in which people were asked how the identified themselves. For the past seven years, the 51-year-old constitutional law expert has served as the rights co-ordinator for the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI).He was also a legal advisor to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) - an indigenous guerrilla group which staged a short-lived uprising in southern Chiapas state in 1994 - during the EZLN's negotiations with the government in his campaign for the post of chief justice he had said that it was "the turn of the indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples to take a seat in the Supreme Court", accusing the highest court of being stuck in the past and wedded to "principles which don't drive real change for the people". Candidates with links to the governing Morena party look set to win the majority of the remaining eight posts on the Supreme Court, according to early of the judicial reform which led to the direct election of all the country's judges say the dominance of the governing party is undermining the judiciary's who backed the reform argued that it would make the judiciary more democratic and beholden to the turnout was the lowest in any federal vote held in Mexico, suggesting that there was little enthusiasm among voters for choosing members of the judiciary directly.
The Independent
16 hours ago
- The Independent
Lula expands Brazil's affirmative action quotas for Indigenous and Black communities
Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Tuesday signed a new law to expand the country's affirmative action policies, increasing the quota for government jobs reserved for Blacks from 20% to 30% and adding Indigenous people and descendants of Afro- Brazilian enslaved people as beneficiaries. The changes apply to candidates applying for permanent and public employment positions across Brazil's federal administration, agencies, public foundations, public companies and state-run mixed-capital companies. As approved by Congress, the quota will be revised in 2035. 'It is important to allow this country for one day to have a society reflected in its public offices, in the Prosecutors' Office, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the Attorney-General's Office, in the Internal Revenue Service, everywhere,' Lula said at the presidential palace in the capital, Brasilia. 'We still have few women, few Black people, almost no Indigenous people." Brazil's first law on racial quotas for government jobs was approved in 2014 by then President Dilma Rousseff, and it extended to public administration positions an affirmative action policy that was in place for access to state-run universities. Brazil's government said in a statement that Blacks and mixed-race people held 25% of top government jobs in 2014, a figure that rose to 36% in 2024. 'Still, Black people are under-represented in the public service and hold lower-wage positions," the government added. Management and Innovation Minister Esther Dweck said the new law was needed due to a low number of new government jobs being opened for candidates in the last decade, when the previous quota was in place. 'We could not reverse the scenario of low representation (for minorities) in the public service," Dweck said in a speech Tuesday. Brazil's government said 55% of the country's population is made up of Black or mixed-race people. It added that more than 70% of Brazilians living below the poverty line are also Black or mixed race, while only 1% of people from those ethnicities are in leadership positions in the private sector. ____
Reuters
19 hours ago
- Reuters
Lula vows to defend Brazil's Supreme Court as US threatens judge
SAO PAULO, June 3 (Reuters) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vowed on Tuesday to defend his country's Supreme Court against attacks from the United States, in a sharp rebuke of potential sanctions from Washington against one of the top court's justices. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told U.S. lawmakers last month that President Donald Trump could slap economic sanctions on the judge overseeing the trial of Brazil's ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally accused of plotting a coup. "It is unacceptable for the president of any country in the world to comment on the decision of the Supreme Court of another country," Lula told reporters, adding that the United States needs to understand the importance of "respecting the integrity of institutions in other countries." Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has drawn fierce criticism from the Brazilian right while leading the court's aggressive curbing of what he has called threats to Brazil's democracy, both online and in an alleged coup plot. He started by ordering social media companies to take down posts from Bolsonaro supporters that he considered threats to democratic institutions, even suspending Elon Musk's social media platform X in Brazil until it caved to his orders. Musk and other right-wing platforms have accused Moraes of censorship. The judge also ordered the arrest of a conservative lawmaker who posted a video attacking the Supreme Court and oversaw a case against Bolsonaro supporters who vandalized government buildings after the former president lost the election. Moraes is now overseeing a case in which Bolsonaro is accused of leading an attempt to overthrow Brazil's democracy to reverse his loss in the 2022 presidential elections. He presided over the electoral court decision barring Bolsonaro from running for public office until 2030 due to behavior in that campaign. Several of those cases have involved criticism, threats and even an alleged assassination attempt targeting Moraes himself, but the Supreme Court has backed the judge's refusal to recuse himself, drawing further complaints from his critics. The setbacks for Bolsonaro's far-right movement led his son, lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, to take a leave from Brazil's Congress this year and move to the United States, where he vowed to lead a campaign against Moraes. Rubio's comments in Congress about Moraes were prompted by questions by Florida House Representative Cory Mills, with whom Eduardo Bolsonaro said he had met days earlier. Mills asked Rubio if he was considering sanctions against Moraes under the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows the U.S. president to impose economic sanctions against foreigners with a record of corruption or human rights abuses. "There is a great possibility that will happen," Rubio said. Eduardo Bolsonaro's role in advocating retribution against Moraes prompted the judge to open an investigation against the lawmaker, after prosecutors alleged judicial interference. Lula, in remarks to reporters on Tuesday, compared Eduardo Bolsonaro's efforts to "terrorist practices," adding that the lawmaker had left Congress to "try to lick Trump's boots."
