Mexico's government pushes for lowering number of senators needed to pass constitutional reform

How’s your math? What’s two-thirds of 128? That’s the mathematical problem whose answer could be of vital importance this week when the 128 federal senators cast their votes on the Mexican government’s controversial judicial reform proposal. Why? Because the constitutional bill — which was approved by the Chamber of Deputies last week — needs the support of a supermajority, or two-thirds of the Mexican Senate, to pass Congress. In case you haven’t yet completed the calculation, two-thirds of 128 is 85.33. So the number of votes needed to reach a two-thirds majority in the Senate is …? It depends who you ask. According to Mexico’s System of Legislative Information, 86 votes are required if all 128 senators are present in the upper house. [ . . . ] On Sunday, the ruling Morena party senator claimed that a constitutional bill could be approved in the Senate with just 85 votes rather than 86. “It’s like in school, when it was point four and below you rounded down to the number immediately below. When it was point six and above you rounded up to the number immediately above,” Fernández Noroña said. “There is not 0.3 of a senator. From my point of view, in a strict sense, 85 senators would be enough,” he said. Senator Adán Augusto López Hernández, Morena’s leader in the upper house, made the same argument last week. Fernández Noroña claimed last Wednesday that Morena and its allies would have a “surplus” of support in the Senate, but he now appears less certain that at least one of 43 opposition senators will vote in favor of the reform that seeks to allow citizens to directly elect Supreme Court justices and thousands of other judges.
Read the full article here: Mexico News Daily