Mexico City’s Congress voted 46-17 on Thursday, 1 October 2026, to move elections for the capital’s remaining local judges and magistrates from 2027 to 4 June 2028. The measure also shortens the vetting candidates must pass to reach the ballot. Seventeen deputies opposed it. Reports didn’t detail their objections.
The Mexico City Change
The 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 stay on the bench until the 2028 winners take office. Rafael Guerra will remain president of the Superior Court of Justice, the city’s top court, until September 2028.
The screening process gets leaner. 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 then cuts each list to two names per post, with gender parity required. The three branches formally nominate those two. Candidates no longer need to submit a three-page essay explaining their candidacy or five letters of reference from neighbours or colleagues.
Preparations begin 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 implementation. The measure aligns the capital’s constitution with a federal amendment that Mexico’s Congress declared valid on 1 June 2026, after 25 state legislatures approved it, La Jornada reported. That package also made foreign interference a ground for annulling an election. Mexico City’s Congress ratified both changes.
The calendar is already tight. 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. Critics have questioned the wider judicial reform over low turnout and the independence of elected judges. The local measure applies only to judicial elections. It doesn’t postpone other votes or remove sitting judges.
Panama’s Reform Fight
In Panama, the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) formed a commission to settle on a unified position on election reform after a leadership dispute. The national board made the decision Thursday after more than six hours of talks. The commission, made up of board members and party lawyers, will review proposed changes to the reform bill and send one party position to PRD deputies in the National Assembly.
The dispute began on 28 September, when Balbina Herrera, the PRD’s secretary-general, wrote to party deputies. She questioned a change to Bill 699 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 under consideration.
Benicio Robinson, who leads the party, said disputes should stay in-house. “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 independent Electoral Tribunal pushed back on 1 October. It rejected the committee’s changes as setbacks, objecting to higher donation caps, a rule allowing winners to keep two posts, and looser resignation rules for prospective candidates. The Assembly’s second debate has stalled, and La Prensa reported the tribunal’s magistrates were summoned to the chamber the following week. The commission has no published deadline.
The PRD also called a nationwide membership drive for 11 October. “Let no one confuse debate with division,” its statement said. TVN said both decisions were tied to renewal of the party’s internal bodies planned for 2027. The party said it hadn’t dropped the committee’s changes or split, and wanted a unified position before the Assembly decides rules for the 2029 election.
Why This Matters: Both stories concern who writes election rules, and how clearly. In Mexico City, a shorter shortlist and fewer paperwork hurdles speed up a process critics already question over turnout and judicial independence. Judges will serve beyond their terms until 2028. In Panama, the Electoral Tribunal’s objections to donation caps, dual posts and resignation rules point to concerns about campaign finance and accountability. From a market and institutional-stability view, predictable rules matter. Voters and investors can plan around a clear calendar, but a stalled bill and an open-ended commission leave the 2029 framework unsettled.