Mexico City - Mexico held its first judicial election on Sunday, causing controversy and sowing confusion, voters worked to understand the process aimed at changing the country’s court system.
Polls are closed, and pollsters start counting colored ballots on Sunday night, questions hanging over the questions that the Mexican judiciary will become, an answer that will only emerge with the results in the coming days.
Mexico's election agency announced late at night that 13% of Mexico's 100 million voters lag behind 60% turnout in the year before the country's presidential election.
Nevertheless, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called the vote "completely successful."
“Mexico is the most democratic country in the world,” she added.
Experts warn that the shocking turnout in historic elections is low due to a series of strange choices and novelty of judges’ votes. Experts say these factors may question the legitimacy of the election, which has faced months of rigorous scrutiny.
Sheinbaum, a member of Mexico's ruling party, rejected criticism and insisted that elections would only make Mexico more democratic and eradicate corruption in the system that most people in the country think is broken.
"People who say Mexico has authoritarianism are lying," she said. "Mexico is a country that will only become more liberal, just and democratic, because that is the will of the people."
While some voters say they feel that the vote decision in the election determines the fate of the country’s democracy, more people express a deep sense of indifference, citing decades of corruption and lack of basic information about voting.
"I'm not interested (voting). The party and its message - they're here, they're gone. Everything is the same," said Raul Bernal, a 50-year-old factory worker in the heart of Mexico's city.
Even without the final statistics, the voting results will still change Mexi
O's judiciary. Morena overhauled the court system late last year, intensifying protests and criticized reforms as an attempt by those in power to seize their political visibility to control government departments until now.
"It's an effort to control the court system," said Laurence Patin, head of the Mexican legal group Juicio Justo. "But it's an antibalance that exists in every healthy democracy."
Instead of being appointed as judges of the excellent and experienced system, Mexican voters voted between about 7,700 candidates competing for more than 2,600 judicial positions.
Some of the country's voting centers have only a group of people and small lines to open throughout the day.
Esteban Hernández, 31, said he disagreed with the election judge and did not support Morena, but because “my vote will be more important because there is not much participation.”
He has studied candidates on the website, listed their qualifications, and decided to choose those with a PhD. Other critics say they voted only for the Supreme Court and other top courts.
Francisco Torres de León, a 62-year-old retired teacher in southern Mexico, called it “a hard process because there are so many candidates and positions they have to fill.”
Sheinbaum's former and political mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has been pushing for justice reform but has been out of the public's eyes since leaving office last year, and he voted to pass Chiapas near the ranch.
"I want to participate in this historic election," he said. "Never in the history of our country... the people decided and have the right to elect a judge."
This process has attracted attention.
Civil society groups such as Defensorxs have already raised red flags for a range of candidates running for elections, including representatives of some of Mexico’s most worrying cartel leaders and local officials who have been forced to resign due to a corruption scandal.
Similarly, among those who raised themselves, former criminals have been imprisoned for drug trafficking for years and have been in contact with a candidate who has been in contact with a religious group whose spiritual leaders are in jail in California after pleading guilty to sexually abused minors.
Other lawyers, Martha Tamayo, a lawyer for Sinaloa and former congresswoman, expressed doubts about the forecast that the election could hand over more power to criminals and criminal groups simply because they already had strong control over the court.
"The impact of the criminal group already exists," she said. "The cartel joins the judges (bribs them) whether they are elected or not."
The public plagued the public during the vote process of Pattin warning. Voters often have to choose from more than a hundred candidates who are not allowed to clearly express their partisan affiliation or conduct extensive campaigns.
As a result, many Mexicans said they were voting blindly, although others voted on Sunday that they still supported the process despite their confusion.
Mexico’s electoral agencies have investigated voter guidelines issued across the country, and critics say political parties have taken blatant action to stack votes.
"Party parties should not only sit with their arms crossed," Pattin said.
While it remains uncertain whether his vote will improve the chances of justice for many Mexicans, 61-year-old actor Manuel José Contreras defended the election, Sheinbaum and her party. He voted in a tone of hope.
“There are problems with reforms, but we need urgent changes,” he said. “You have to start with something.”