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By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN, Times Staff WriterNext year's national election will be the first that Mexicans living abroad can vote in.
PLANT CITY - Lilia Nacianceno gunned her sedan down a two-lane road, speeding by fields of crops turned blue-gray in the fading daylight.
In her trunk was a box of application forms for absentee ballots.
"I've already distributed 700 of these," Nacianceno said as she swung the car into a mobile home camp full of Mexican field workers.
"We did some here, in Dover, Wimauma, at parent meetings, in Lakeland and Mulberry," she said, stopping in front of men clustered around a charcoal grill for warmth.
"It's so hard," she said.
For the first time, Mexicans living abroad can vote for president next year through absentee ballots. But as the mid January deadline to apply for an absentee ballot approaches, only about 3,000 out of more than 4-million Mexicans in the United States who are registered to vote have requested a ballot. The problem, experts and voters say, is a cumbersome Mexican bureaucracy, short notice, a scattered electorate combined with immigration obstacles that make Florida's recount of hanging chad seem smooth.
To volunteers like Nacianceno, the change is nothing short of revolutionary. Mexican immigrants, who send billions of dollars back home each year, could have a big impact on Mexican politics. But some potential voters wish they didn't need to migrate in the first place.
For now, Nacianceno runs between meetings, asking, "Do you have a registration card?"
* * *
Last summer, Mexican lawmakers approved a bill allowing their citizens to vote abroad in the July 2006 presidential elections. The move came after a decade-long battle against it by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as PRI.
PRI had opposed giving expatriates the vote for fear of outside political influence in the United States and concern that Mexicans abroad would blame the government for their need to migrate for better jobs.
President Vicente Fox promised expatriates the vote during his successful 2000 campaign, an election that ended PRI's 71-year rule.
Since then, Fox has reached out to Mexican immigrants and welcomed them back for visits, calling them VIPs. Support by Fox and pressure by immigrant groups in the United States finally helped push through the change last summer.
But it extended the right to vote only for president, not for governors or members of Congress, which experts consider key to making a difference in Mexican politics.
Also, the presidential candidates are not allowed to campaign or raise funds in the United States, severely hampering efforts to reach immigrants.
To participate, Mexican immigrants must get a voter's identification card in Mexico, which 4.2-million Mexicans in the United States have done.
It's unclear how many of them live in the Tampa Bay area. The Census Bureau says about 80,000 people of Mexican descent live here, but many of them are U.S. citizens.
Mexicans with voting cards must request an absentee ballot by Jan.15, provide a copy of their card, show proof of their residence and fill out a form. Ballots will be mailed to them and must be returned by July 1. Given the dismal voter interest shown, supporters fear the obstacles are too daunting.
* * *
As day turned to night, Nacianceno set up a large card table and wooden benches between mobile homes in front of a sagging clothesline. A cluster of men and women wandered over, crossing their arms against the night chill.
Nacianceno pulled out the absentee ballot application forms.
She tried to dispel a widespread distrust of Mexico's postal service, which is widely considered unreliable. "All your votes are going to be guarded at the airport by the military," she said.
The men used flashlights, the glare thrown by her cell phone and a string of white Christmas lights on a mobile home to read the forms.
Several men spoke up, concerned. They move around to work and rely on post office boxes. The forms required home addresses.
Galdino Oro, 30, wanted to know if he could get a voter's card in the United States, where he is living illegally.
No, he couldn't, said Rogelio Villanueva, another volunteer on hand to help.
Given a crackdown on the border, Oro said the trip back to Mexico to get a voter's card would cost him $2,500 to pay human smugglers to bring him, his wife and their three children back to Florida.
Like many workers, Oro immigrated to this country as a child, at 8, too young to get a voter's identification card. But he wanted to participate, he said, watching his friends fill out the forms.
"They have to listen to us," he said. "What's important is that we show our presence."
* * *
Victor Martinez and his brother propped their forms against an outside washing machine. They were among a half-dozen men at the camp filling out applications for absentee ballots.
Martinez, 30, says the money he and other workers send back to his home state of Oaxaca pays for scholarships, clinics and churches.
He and his 27-year-old brother, Luis, miss their parents. "If we could find the same opportunities (in Mexico), maybe we could stay," he said.
If more Mexican immigrants vote, he says, politicians are going to have to answer to them.
Louis DeSipio agrees. He's an associate professor of political science and Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine.
"Immigrants have always sent money back to families," DeSipio said. This year, the amount from Mexicans abroad is expected to reach $20-billion.
More recently, their money has paid to build roads, schools and clinics. "It relieves the governments of needing to build roads," he said. "But now you have investors who expect a payback."
Odilon Mezquite, who helped distribute 400 absentee ballot applications in Clearwater, thinks the American political system will rub off on the Mexican one through immigrants.
"If we learn something in this country, we can use it there," he said.
--Times staff writer Matthew Waite and researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report.