President Claudia Sheinbaum has instructed incoming Legal Counsel Luisa María Alcalde to assess postponing the 2027 judicial election to 2028, in light of a bill introduced by Morena lawmakers last week. The proposal seeks to separate it from midterms for impartiality and reform candidate selection. An INE counselor warned that combining elections would not save costs.
President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that her administration is considering moving the judicial election from 2027 to 2028, with potential improvements to the reform. She tasked Luisa María Alcalde, set to head the Legal Counselorship on May 1, with the evaluation. "We are evaluating if it moves to 28 [...]. We'll wait for Luisa to come in and inform you," Sheinbaum said during her morning briefing.
This follows a bill introduced on April 21 by Morena lawmakers, including Alfonso Ramírez Cuéllar, Olga Sánchez Cordero, Javier Corral, and Susana Harp. The initiative proposes delaying the election to the first Sunday of June 2028 to avoid overlap with 2027 partisan elections, aiming to preserve judicial impartiality. It includes creating a Single Evaluation Committee with representatives from the three branches of government, having the INE issue the candidate call, exams by the National Judicial Training School, competency certification, and removing subjective criteria like academic averages.
Earlier, during the 'plan B' electoral reform, Sheinbaum had suggested a delay but withdrew it; the final bill took effect April 24, keeping the 2027 date.
At the Strengthening Judicial Elections forum, INE counselor Rita Bell López argued against combining the judicial election with midterms, stating, "There is no savings [...], they have differences and it's not possible," due to duplicated functions and higher costs from temporary staff.
