{ "story_id": "5ab97f5e2b96b216b8468cfd8db00c12", "desk": "drm3", "revision": 1, "published_at": "2026-09-04T00:17:08.000Z", "content_hash": "f7166b7940a0a605ac7706dd2b2c7669fccc0d206ee6006b3f603497c0d4c4ae", "hash_basis": "sha256 over `headline\\ndek\\nprose`, plus `\\n` + the canonical citations JSON when any source is placed, plus `\\n#blog` for blogs", "basis": { "headline": "Mexico's INE Approves Controversial Rules for Handling Flat Ballots in 2026-2027 Elections", "dek": "Mexico's National Electoral Institute approved a mechanism to decide on flat ballots, sparking accusations of fraud from opposition parties.", "prose": "The General Council of Mexico's National Electoral Institute (INE) approved by a majority vote the guidelines for preparing and developing district-level computations for the 2026-2027 federal elections. [^1]\n\nGuadalupe Taddei, the president councilor, supported detecting irregularities but joined Frida Gómez's proposal to identify ballots as 'computable or non-computable' to avoid exceeding the INE's authority to annul votes. [^2]\n\nIn the 2025 judicial election, 800 polling stations nationwide were considered invalid due to ironed ballots, primarily in municipalities in the State of Chiapas which represented over 20% of installed voting tables in that entity. [^3]\n\nSeveral councilors argued the INE cannot invent causes for ballot invalidity that are not explicitly stated in the law. [^4]\n\nThe National Electoral Institute (INE) modified guidelines for district council counts to separate and identify ballots without creases, presuming they did not enter the ballot box as a citizen's vote. [^5]\n\nCouncil member Uuc-kib Espadas argued that the lack of fold marks is an unequivocal sign of electoral fraud because the ballot dimensions make it physically impossible to insert them without folding. [^6]\n\nThe approved mechanism allows district councils to document flat ballots-those appearing in urns without fold marks-via an incident report and decide in a plenary session whether to compute them. [^7]\n\nThe proposal was approved with seven votes in favor and four against, after the original project and an alternative proposal by Rita Bell López López were rejected. 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