Mexico’s judicial election: The campaign

Novice judges and useless politicians force civil society to prepare for Mexico’s most controversial election.

This is part one of a multi-part series report on the judicial election in Mexico.

Just rip the bandaid off. That seems to be the government’s approach to the judicial election—Mexico’s first—in which the country’s judges and magistrates will be chosen by voters. Mexicans will go out on June 1st to elect positions all the way from Supreme Court justices to their local magistrates.

The process has been rushed. But that feels deliberate. The judicial reform, which included popular election of judges, was passed in the final days of president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s tenure (2018-2024). The process was one of the most contentious episodes in recent political history. It also left López Obrador’s successor and ally, Claudia Sheinbaum, holding the bag.

The Mexico Political Economist covered the drama surrounding the judicial reform in the immediate aftermath. In the days, weeks, and months that followed though, the implications of what an elected judiciary meant sunk in—or at least the fears of what it might mean. This uncertainty has arguably affected the Mexican economy more than even the return of Donald Trump to the presidency. It has frozen investments and cooled growth forecasts.

With a difficult review of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) looming in 2026 and darkening economic clouds gathering at a disquietingly close distance, Sheinbaum has pushed to make the election a fait accompli. The result has been a rushed, disorganised, and problematic election. One so convoluted and underfunded that optimistic estimates put turnout at 15%—with most calculating something well below that.

The opposition has all but declared the death of Mexican democracy due to this election. That has yet to be seen. What The Mexico Political Economist did find after following the campaigns of a handful of candidates and their teams was that this election has shown the persistence of the worst old habits of Mexican politics.

The election has revealed the ineptitude and corruption of a government trying to rush a process that will change Mexico forever. It has demonstrated the total inefficacy of the opposition. But it also has revealed those trying to make the most of these elections—organised civil society from citizens’ action groups to nonprofit watchdogs to social media influencers.

Up a creek without a gavel

The drafters of this judicial election couldn’t have tried to induce a lower turnout if they’d tried. To fully fill out each of the nine ballots many Mexicans will receive, voters will have to remember over three dozen names from a selection of the 3,400 candidates vying for 881 positions across the country.

But if you think voters have it bad, spare a thought for the candidates themselves.

Claudia Adame, a specialist consultant in electoral finance and oversight, noticed something was wrong as soon as the election was announced. Normally, by then, she would have been approached by a dozen candidates for her services—or at least, their parties would have.

This judicial election, however, does not allow parties to intervene nor for candidates to have any affiliation to them. It makes voting all the more difficult, since electors must sort through every single one of the hundreds of candidates to decide which they like most on an individual basis. It also deprives the candidates of the campaigning infrastructure politicians rely on.

That might sound great in theory, but Adame quickly realised that these novice judicial candidates were getting crushed.

“A campaign was never something I imagined I’d have to do,” Ximena Jiménez, a candidate to become a local magistrate, told The Mexico Political Economist. She’s lucky given she got her start in the public eye as a presenter on the Judiciary’s TV channel and knows her way around a camera.

Not so for Javier Jiménez (no relation to Ximena), an arbitrage lawyer from a prestigious firm now running to become one of Mexico’s nine Supreme Court justices. “I haven’t felt this unprepared since I had to give the measurements for my wife’s engagement ring,” he told The Mexico Political Economist.

Given all this inexperience, Adame, the election finance consultant, found many candidates didn’t even know they had to legally keep count of their expenses. So she went out to offer her services to candidates directly. Many had already got themselves into trouble.

This isn’t necessarily the candidates’ fault. Javier Jiménez accused the INE, Mexico’s electoral authority, of not being clear or forthcoming about the rules, and of making them incredibly convoluted when they were eventually published.

For instance, a candidate can’t print t-shirts or posters, but they could put up one made out of paper. A candidate can’t buy or use any equipment that they didn’t have before the campaign—a useful plus for candidates close to the government and previously in political positions who all happen to have loudspeakers, stages, and hundreds of foldable chairs.

“About 5% of the candidates I’ve spoken to could be considered to be running competent campaigns; experts. Another 10% are relatively well informed,” Adame told The Mexico Political Economist. The final 85% were already in desperate straits when she contacted them. Some, she said, had already signed contracts or paid for social media consultants charging them an arm and a leg for basic services… or worse.

For the past couple of months, judicial election must have proved an irresistible low-hanging fruit for fraudsters claiming to be social media experts. Most candidates are inexperienced in the art of campaigning and desperate to get quick results online specifically—making them ideal targets. This is because, when all was said and done, it became apparent that candidates would only be able to promote themselves via flyering on the streets or through unpaid social media campaigns.

It’s been a tough campaign. “I’ve spent more time cheering them up than giving them financial advice,” said Adame.

Lost opportunities

Viewed in the most generous light possible, the judicial election should have served as an ambitious and very worthy social studies crash course for the whole of Mexico.

At their best, each candidate is tasked with describing the nature, purpose, and day to day workings of Mexico’s least known branch of government. It is unfortunate that, out of the people she’s met on the street campaigning, those who know the most about the judiciary are those who have been unfairly treated by it, says Ximena Jimenez in a campaign video.

Mexican law is particularly impregnable to non-experts, the hope is that a good dose of electoral democracy will force judges to communicate in a more comprehensible way. “There is a term called ‘definitive suspension’ of a case,” said Javier Jiménez, “which in actual fact is a temporary suspension! How is anyone with their common sense still intact going to know that?”

But even that worthwhile goal is being tarnished by the realities of an electoral campaign. “A judge can’t provide a political platform,” said Javier Jiménez. “A judicial candidate’s only proposal should be ‘I will uphold the law.’” That is advice many of his fellow candidates have not taken to heart, promising things they’d have no power to deliver if elected—like better roads or pensions.

The dismally low predicted turnout shows how little the message has permeated. Don’t blame the candidates for not being the most effective legal communicators, though. The odds were set completely against them from the start.

Misjudging the real kingmakers

The government has truly botched this election—and it seems to know it.

Initially, its members turned to social media posts, public meetings, press interviews, and rallies to beg citizens to vote. Sheinbaum even turned her victory lap rally, after initial US tariffs were put on hold, into a lecture on the election—hundreds of previously excited spectators walked out or switched off.

Now, on the eve of the election and still desperate to get turnout up, sympathetic local governments have been reported to have instructed their political clientele to go out and vote for judges favourable to the ruling party. There have also been reports of government officials handing out “cheat sheets” to voters—mock ballots showing who to vote for.

The opponents of the government have noticed its desperate attempts to get anyone to vote, so it has belatedly made its own strategy one of lobbying for abstentionism. However, its main activity over the past few months has been to claim that this election represents the death knell of Mexican democracy. If this is true, then it must answer for its lethargy during its demise.

The judicial election would have been the perfect shot in the arm needed by the opposition. There are many critics of the government on the ballot that could have continued to act as a check on the ruling party. Instead, by refusing to participate, the opponents of Morena, the ruling party, are ensuring pro-government candidates will win—when they wouldn’t have necessarily done so.

With a useless opposition barely mobilizing and a government hellbent on smothering lipstick on this pig of an election, there has been precious good news to report. That is until one turns to civil society’s role.

For those pushing for a boycott, RECAP, a citizens opposition group, and 100 other organisations have come together to organise a “Black Sunday” march. It could become one of the biggest anti-Morena protests since Sheinbaum took office.

For those in favour of voting, civil society has been putting in the work the politicians failed to. There’s investigative media outlets and nonprofit watchdogs filtering through as many candidates as possible to identify potential bad actors. This has by now uncovered dozens of people linked to organised crime or who have committed crimes or abuses themselves.

There are also the commentators who have spent weeks now combing through each profile to analyse and communicate who they think are worthwhile candidates—including whether they are qualified enough and whether they stand with, against, or are independent of the government.

Given the weight of social media in this campaign, an incommensurate amount of power has been put in the hands of political influencers. In a positive turn of events, they have outdone themselves and the politicians in making it easier for voters to cast a sensible vote.

There is so much that could go wrong, and yet there is so much at stake. Everybody in Mexico, no matter their political affiliation, seems to understand it—yet only civil society appears to have taken its role seriously.

“This election has got to work,” Javier Jiménez warned. “It’s too important for it to go wrong.”