By all accounts, Jorge Mujica did everything he could to ensure he would be able to vote in the historic Mexican election while living in Chicago.
He registered to vote in-person by the February 25 deadline and lined up at 7:50 a.m. Sunday outside the consulate, 204 S. Ashland Ave., to cast his ballot.
Except he never got to vote.
By 7 p.m., Mujica estimates, he and about 500 others were told the voting booths had officially closed.
“It’s totally ridiculous,” Mujica said. The National Electoral Institute of Mexico, he added, “did not prepare, they didn’t think about the logistics.”
The institute reported turnout abroad nearly doubled compared to the last presidential election in 2018, with 184,372 ballots cast via mail-in, online and in-person voting combined.
In Chicago alone, 1,389 people voted in-person on Sunday, though 1,317 had pre-registered and up to 1,500 spots were available for those who did not register but had a valid voting ID card.
Backlog at Mexican consulates occurred nationwide, such as in Los Angeles and Houston, where hundreds of Mexican nationals who pre-registered or had valid voter IDs were turned away.
“There’s a lot of resentment, a lot of anger because we pre-registered,” said Mujica, a long-time Mexican activist living in Chicago, adding that everyone who pre-registered should have been able to vote.
Mujica says the voting process was frustrating, especially when many Mexican nationals migrated to the U.S. due to political frustrations and disbelief in the government. Those living abroad “want things to change, they’ve seen the change and want to continue the change,” he said. “We continue to be Mexicans.”
Jorge Ramos, a television news anchor on Univision, also took to social media to express his frustrations with the voting process, calling it “not fair.”
“Thousands of Mexicans abroad, with the right and proper documentation, were not able to vote in the Mexican consulates in the U.S,” Ramos posted on X. “It was disorganized and lacked planning, you can’t promote the vote and then not be ready to receive it.”
Although the INE is still processing the votes captured abroad in its final voting count, over 54 million Mexicans were able to cast their ballots in the monumental election. Claudia Sheinbaum, former mayor of Mexico City, a renowned climate scientist and political activist, was elected the country’s first female president, getting about 58% of the vote.
