According to the Foreign Voting Commission, of the already-scant half-million Mexican registered voters living in the United States, only 32,600 have requested ballots for the upcoming elections.
The agency chalks up this reticence to fear of deportation; requesting a ballot means revealing one’s address, thus increasing, in voters’ minds, their vulnerability to the capriciousness and unpredictability of the Trump government’s immigration policy.
The commission has repeatedly assured voters abroad that there is no danger of deportation posed by a ballot request; in spite of this, requests continue to drop. Even so, Mexico’s National Electoral Institute has socked away between 150 and 180 million pesos for ballot mailings to and from the United States, just in case.
Of the 500,000 registered voters in the United States, 50,445 are from Jalisco. According to voting commission president Enrique Andrade Gonzalez, of that amount only 3,165 have requested ballots.