Mexico's ruling party slated to control the newly elected Supreme Court, vote tallies show

MEXICO CITY — Mexico's ruling Morena party is poised to control the country's Supreme Court, vote tallies of the country's first judicial election indicated Tuesday, inching the party closer toward a grip on all three branches of government.

Votes were still being counted for the majority of the 2,600 federal, state and local judge positions up for grabs in Sunday's elections, but results neared completion for the nine Supreme Court positions.

The majority of the newly elected justices share strong ties and ideological alignments with the ruling party, shifting a once fairly balanced high court into the hands of the very party that overhauled the judicial system to elect judges for the first time.

Experts warned the shift would undercut checks and balances in the Latin American nation, and would offer President Claudia Sheinbaum and her party an easier path to push through their agenda.

''We're watching as power is falling almost entirely into the hands of one party,'' said Georgina De la Fuente, election specialist with the Mexican consulting firm Strategia Electoral. ''There isn't any balance of power.''

Despite that, officials have continued to fiercely reject democratic concerns.

A Morena-leaning court and an Indigenous justice

With more than 98% of votes counted Tuesday night, most of those slated to head Mexico's highest court were members or former members of the Morena party. A number of them who were Supreme Court justices prior to the election were appointed by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum's mentor who pushed through the judicial overhaul last year. Others were advisers to the former president or the party or campaigned with politically aligned visions for the judiciary.

Mexico's top electoral authority listed the nine likely winners in a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.

Not all of the prospective winners were explicitly aligned with Morena. One standout was Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, an Indigenous lawyer from the southern state of Oaxaca. He has no clear party affiliation, though Sheinbaum said repeatedly she hoped to have an Indigenous judge on the court and said on Tuesday she was happy to see he would be.

Political controversy

Critics had feared that Morena would emerge from the election with control of the judiciary.

The vote came after months of fierce debate, prompted when López Obrador and the party jammed through the reforms for judges to be elected instead of being appointed based on merits. The overhaul will notably limit the Supreme Court as a counterweight to the president.

Judges, experts and the political opposition say the reform was an attempt to take advantage of high popularity levels to stack courts in favor of Morena. Sheinbaum and her mentor have insisted that electing judges will root out corruption in a system most Mexicans agree is broken.

On Tuesday, Sheinbaum brushed off complaints by Mexico's opposition — which called for a boycott of the vote — that the Supreme Court was now unfairly stacked against them, saying ''they're the ones who decided not to participate in the election.''

The elections were marred by low participation — about 13% — and confusion by voters who struggled to understand the new system, something opponents quickly latched onto as a failure.

De la Fuente said Morena is likely to use its new lack of a counterweight in the high court to push through rounds of reforms, including reforms to Mexico's electoral systems, a proposal that has stirred controversy and was previously blocked by courts.

Guadalupe Taddei Zavala, chief counselor of Mexico's electoral authority, on Tuesday rejected democratic concerns. ''I don't see any (constitutional) crisis after the election,'' she said.

Likely Supreme Court justices

— Hugo Aguilar Ortiz was the big surprise from the election. The Indigenous lawyer led all vote-getters, including several sitting Supreme Court justices. He's known as a legal activist fighting for the rights of Indigenous Mexicans and has criticized corruption in the judiciary.

— Lenia Batres was already a Supreme Court justice and was appointed by López Obrador. Previously a congresswoman, she's a member of Morena and an ally of Mexico's president.

— Yasmín Esquivel is a Supreme Court justice who was appointed by López Obrador. She focused her campaign on modernizing the justice system and has pushed for gender equality. She was at the center of a 2022 controversy when she was accused of plagiarizing her thesis. She is considered an ally of the Morena party.

— Loretta Ortiz is a justice on the Supreme Court who was appointed by López Obrador. She also served in Congress and resigned from Morena in 2018 in a show of independence as a judge. She's considered an ally of the party.

— María Estela Ríos González is a lawyer who acted as legal adviser to López Obrador, first when he was mayor of Mexico City and later when he became president. She has a long history as a public servant and works in labor law and on a number of Indigenous issues.

— Giovanni Figueroa Mejía is a lawyer from the Pacific coast state of Nayarit with a doctorate in constitutional law. He works as an academic at the Iberoamericana University in Mexico City. He's worked in human rights. While he holds no clear party affiliation, he supported the judicial overhaul, saying in an interview with his university that it ''was urgent and necessary in order to rebuild'' the judiciary.

— Irving Espinosa Betanzo is a magistrate on Mexico City's Supreme Court and has previously worked as a congressional adviser to Morena. He campaigned for the country's highest court on a platform of eliminating nepotism and corruption and pushing for human rights.

— Arístides Rodrigo Guerrero García is a law professor pushing for social welfare with no experience as a judge, but who has worked as a public servant and has experience in both constitutional and parliamentary law. He gained traction in campaigns for a social media video of him claiming he's ''more prepared than a pork rind.''

— Sara Irene Herrerías Guerra is a prosecutor specializing in human rights for Mexico's Attorney General's Office. She's worked on issues like gender equality, sexually transmitted infections and human trafficking. In 2023, she worked on the investigation of a fire in an immigration facility in the border city of Ciudad Juárez that killed 40 migrants.