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Mexican Election Draws its ‘Anulistas’
Canceled ballots to show voters' anger

By Sandra Dibble
San Diego Union-Tribune Staff Writer

2:00 a.m. July 4, 2009

TIJUANA — With Mexico's federal midterm election tomorrow, Ignacio Martinez Luna is preparing to draw a large X across his multicolored paper ballot — an action that will lead to the cancellation of his vote in Tijuana's 5th Federal Electoral District.

In doing so, the 51-year-old environmental consultant joins a protest movement across Mexico whose members say their annulled ballots will send a message to Mexico's political leadership.

“What we want to show is that there is widespread displeasure,” said Martinez Luna, who would like to see electoral reforms permitting independent candidates and re-election. “The parties have up to now not understood.”

The anulistas, as they have become known, are raising their voices as political parties vie for control of Mexico's Congress during the second half of President Felipe Calderón's six-year term. The movement coincides with a wave of discontent in Mexico as the country struggles with corruption, cartel-related violence and economic recession.

The entire 500-seat Chamber of Deputies will be replaced, and polls are showing that Calderon's National Action Party, or PAN, will likely lose the plurality it has held since 2006 to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which dominated Mexico for seven decades. Also at stake are six governorships and numerous state and local offices. In Baja California, long a PAN stronghold, the party is expected to easily win all eight federal electoral districts.

Critics of the anulista movement fear it will mar a political process in which only 40 percent of eligible voters are expected to cast ballots. They say it will serve to strengthen the base vote of the dominant political parties and could cause smaller ones to lose their registry.

“I understand the motivation, the reasons, and I even share them to some extent, but they're throwing their ballot away,” said Gastón Luken Garza, a political independent invited by the PAN to run as its candidate in the 5th District.

“It garners no results. We need that vote to count,” said Luken, a former counselor to Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute.

Mexican electoral officials say that typically 2 percent to 3 percent of ballots are annulled. Anulistas hope that increasing that proportion will send a strong message as voters who are unhappy with the choices decide to vote for no one.

“It's an elite dynamic. The numbers aren't huge,” said Daniel Lund, a Mexico City-based political pollster. “Anything over five (percent) will become interesting.”

Anulistas are not a single group, but several, linked informally through their common call for reforms that would weaken the grip of political parties and permit greater citizen participation. They have relied heavily on the Internet to spread the word — through blogs, Web sites and videos.

“It's a complaint about the weakness of democracy in Mexico and a search for new ways to strengthen it,” said Benedicto Ruiz Vargas, a Tijuana political analyst who plans to void his ballot in the 6th Electoral District.

Some suggest drawing a large X through the ballot; others favor checking all the boxes. One group is urging participants to write in a fictional independent candidate named Esperanza Marchita — “Withered Hope.”

Its supporters include Dulce Maria Sauri, a former PRI leader, and Jacobo Zabludovsky, a widely known former television anchorman, as well as a number of influential political analysts.

Ernesto Garcı́a Montaño, a 60-year-old businessman from the Baja California capital of Mexicali, said he drew little support in 1994 when he called for voters to annul their votes.

“People just weren't ready to line up at a polling booth in order to void their votes,” said Garcı́a, a former member of the PAN. But now, “people are realizing we're not on the right track. We're giving a lot of power to the parties, and the parties are not responding.”

In Mexico City this week, an assembly of anulistas drew representatives of close to 40 groups. They called for measures such as decreased government financing of political parties and giving citizens a greater voice through mechanisms that include plebiscites and referendums.

Critics say they are simply cutting themselves out of the electoral process and further widening the gap between politicians and the people they represent.

“What they're doing by not voting is turning the election to the base voters of each of the parties,” said Jeffrey Weldon, a political scientist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico in Mexico City. “It looks to benefit mostly the PRI.”

Advocates of voiding the vote say it is a step forward as they embark on a campaign to reverse Mexico's course. In a recent YouTube video encouraging the choice, historian Lorenzo Meyer said annulling the vote “can be the beginning of a truly democratic option.”