The National Electoral Institute (INE) is facing budgetary challenges. An analysis by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO) showed that resources allocated to administrative management and electoral organization have fallen.
On the other hand, the INE transfers 31% of its resources to political parties. This year's elections represent 10 thousand 179 million pesos to the parties, the highest amount in history.
On this account, for each voter, the INE will spend 327 pesos on these elections, of which 102 go to the funding of political parties, the IMCO said.
Former electoral counselor Pamela San Martín, who assisted in presenting the results of this report, told Causa Natura Media about the budgetary challenges faced by the INE, as well as her perspective on Morena's proposal to elect electoral councillors by popular election.
— Just looking at the results released today by the IMCO, we see how gradually the (administrative) budget has been decreasing and in contrast we have the biggest elections in history. Does what is happening with the INE make budgetary sense?
The first thing we are going to see is that they are the biggest because each election is going to be bigger than the last for a very simple reason. There are more citizens and more citizens.
As long as we don't start to see fewer citizens, there are going to be more, because the census is going to increase. That means that the polls are going to increase, it means that the number of polling officers is going to increase and we're leaving like a waterfall.
In this logic, let's say, the fact that the choice is bigger does not necessarily mean that the choice is more expensive because there are processes that can be optimized or made more efficient.
— How do you do this?
Through the use of technologies. I'll give you the example, when the concept of independent candidacies was introduced in 2014, reviewing the signatures of those candidacies meant an army of people who reviewed materially and who were capturing each one of them.
Then, an automated system was introduced through an app that also allowed us to cross the databases with each other and with the nominal list of voters, and so on. And that obviously streamlined the procedure and meant that such an enormous amount of human resources were not required to be able to review them.
I'll give this as a minimal example. This can occur at different times.
So there doesn't necessarily have to be a causal relationship between bigger choice and more expensive choice.
Pamela San Martin, former director of the INE. Photo: Juan Luis Garcia.
— Are the cuts justified?
Here what is happening, if there have been strong budget cuts that sometimes have not even taken into account the impacts they will have on the exercise of the functions of the INE, of the exercise of the functions of the electoral authorities.
And it seems to me that what we have to see is to rationally analyze the cuts and analyze them through what programs or projects the INE is proposing that are the ones that the Chamber of Deputies says should not be carried out.
And it may be that some are fundamental and those cannot be put back. But let's say that there is rationality within the cutback; just as there must be rationality within budgeting.
The obligation seems to me to have to go both ways, in order to guarantee the agreement for the conduct of the elections, but also the adequate exercise of public resources.
— One of the main recommendations made by the IMCO is to create a fund for the INE (to organize extraordinary elections and ordinary processes). How do you see this proposal to somehow accumulate resources?
I think they can be established and that has been true the logic, for example, of trusts that the INE would have had at the time.
Trusts, for example, for when there were terminations of contracts by public servants of the INE and that's where the payment for leaving the institute came out; to be able to make adjustments to buildings, and so on, and that could be a mechanism.
What we have to see is if that is the best way, we will have to analyze what is the right way to guarantee the holding of elections.
I think there are two problems. One problem is the INE budget, but another problem is the budget of local public bodies, which has also been in the spotlight since the creation of public electoral bodies, but there is no very strict oversight over the resources that are requested and exercised at the local level.
— What should we strengthen to avoid these problems?
I think we lack a culture of transparency between what is budgeted; the way in which they are exercised and the reasons why certain items are modified; and I think that is something that has to be worked on in order to determine if the best way is to make a pension fund or to have each election, let's say every budget year a certain amount established for the elections. Taking into account certain contingencies, there may be different solutions; it is a problem that should not be a problem; which does not mean that there is no obligation of accountability on the part of the authorities.
— And finally, I can't let this topic go either because according to the polls, Sheinbaum is in the lead and in March in San Luis Potosí he declared that the INE does not guarantee democracy and that there would be changes such as councillors being appointed by the people and not by Congress. What opinion do you deserve?
I don't think that's the solution. I think it is absolutely valid to discuss how the mechanism for selecting counselors, counselors, should be carried out. In different countries of the region and the world, there has been a great deal of discussion about which body, which authority should be responsible for the appointment of certain officials to ensure greater separation of power, from governmental power, let's say. It seems to me that this is not achieved with the popular election, it sounds very nice to think that it is by popular choice, but what we would first have to do is take a step back.
Who is going to propose them? Because at least the proposal that had been put on the table with the Constitutional reforms that was presented to the Congress of the Republic was that the one who proposed was the Executive Power, the Legislative Power and the Judiciary; forgive me, the Executive Power and the Legislative Power, we are talking about the parties, it doesn't change anything, it changes who makes the proposal, so there we already have a deviation from this intention to keep political parties out of it, and besides, the moment it becomes a popularity contest to exercise a function of this nature It seems to me that what is generated are perverse incentives to come to office and in due course to hold office.
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