Mexico City’s Congress voted 46-17 on Thursday, 1 October 2026, to move the election of the city’s remaining local judges and magistrates from 2027 to June 2028. The measure also eases the hurdles candidates must clear to reach the ballot. Seventeen deputies voted no. Reports didn’t detail their objections.
What Changes for Candidates
The constitutional reform schedules posts left unfilled in 2025, along with vacancies, for election “without exception” on 4 June 2028, El Universal reported. Judges whose terms end in 2027 will remain in office until the winners of the 2028 vote take their oaths. Rafael Guerra will remain president of the Superior Court of Justice, the city’s top court, until September 2028.
The vetting process gets lighter. Evaluation committees appointed by the city’s legislature, executive and judiciary will shortlist the four highest-rated applicants per post, down from ten. A public lottery will cut each list to two names per post, with gender parity required. The three branches will then formally nominate those two. The reform also drops two requirements: a three-page essay explaining a candidacy and five letters of reference from neighbours or colleagues.
Preparations start with the Mexico City Electoral Institute’s (IECM) first session in the first week of April 2027, rather than September. Congress must publish the call for candidates by 30 April 2027, setting out each stage, date and post.
Alberto Martínez Urincho, who presented the bill, said it provides “greater clarity, precision and legal certainty” for an orderly rollout. The change aligns the capital with a federal amendment that Mexico’s Congress declared valid on 1 June 2026, after 25 state legislatures approved it. That package also made foreign interference grounds for annulling an election. Mexico City’s Congress ratified both changes.
Rubén Moreira, who leads the opposition PRI in the lower house, warned in June that 2028 would be crowded, with a presidential recall vote and four state elections also due. The wider judicial reform has drawn criticism over low turnout and the independence of elected judges. The local measure applies only to judicial elections. It won’t postpone other votes or remove sitting judges.
Panama’s Ruling Party Seeks One Voice
In Panama, the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) formed a commission to settle a unified position on election reform after a leadership dispute. The party’s national board made the decision Thursday, after more than six hours of talks. Board members and party lawyers will serve on the commission. It will review proposed changes to the reform bill and send a single position to PRD deputies in the National Assembly.
The row began with a 28 September letter from Balbina Herrera, the PRD’s secretary-general, to party deputies. She questioned a change to Bill 699, the election reform, that would make each party president its legal representative. In the PRD, that role belongs to the secretary-general. A leadership resolution dated 29 September said her letter “does not come from the majority will,” censured her unilateral statements and backed the reform proposal before the Assembly.
Benicio Robinson, the party president, said disputes should stay inside the party. “What I will not do, even if I am right, is go to the media to talk about a colleague,” he said, TVN reported. Robinson also chairs the Assembly’s Government Committee, which approved the bill in first debate after changing, removing or adding 46 of its 168 articles.
The Electoral Tribunal Pushes Back
On 1 October, Panama’s Electoral Tribunal, the independent election authority, rejected the committee’s changes as setbacks. It objected to higher donation caps, a rule letting winners hold two posts, and looser resignation rules for prospective candidates. The full Assembly’s second debate has stalled. La Prensa reported that the tribunal’s magistrates had been summoned to the chamber the following week, when the debate was due to start. The commission has no published deadline.
The PRD said it hadn’t dropped the committee’s changes or split. It wants a unified position before the Assembly decides rules for the 2029 election. The party also called a nationwide membership drive for 11 October. “Let no one confuse debate with division,” its statement said. TVN tied both moves to the planned 2027 renewal of the party’s internal bodies. The PRD governed Panama from 2019 to 2024 under President Laurentino Cortizo.
Why This Matters:
Elections for judges and rules governing campaign money test public trust in institutions. In Mexico City, voters will wait until June 2028 to fill the remaining judicial posts, while candidates face fewer screening steps and no written statement explaining why they’re running. Critics of the wider judicial reform already point to low turnout and doubts about the independence of elected judges. In Panama, the country’s independent electoral authority calls parts of a bill setbacks, including higher donation caps and a two-post rule. Such provisions shape who can afford to run and whom officeholders answer to. With the second debate stalled and no deadline for the PRD commission, the public has no clear date for when those rules will be settled before the 2029 election.