Latinnews.com($) reports: “On 21 April the Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE) ordered two TV ads to be taken off the air.” PAN and a group were alleged to have gone too far in their depiction of former presidential candidate Lopez Obrador, and that the latter “had broken the law which bans unregistered groups from attacking political […]

Mentioning short campaign periods and limits on expenditures in privately-owned media, LatioMadrid writes that the rules governing political campaigns are more “clear” and “strict” in Spain than in Latin America, and thus that campaigns are less expensive. They fail to mention that information about campaign donations and expenditures are far more forthcoming in several Latin American countries (e.g. […]

El Universal (spanish) reports that political parties’ operating expenses cost in the neighborhood of US$2B over the past 11 years and rose faster than inflation over the period.

Advierte Alfonso Ramírez Cuéllar, an aspirant for his leadership in his party, the PRD, charges that PRD factions are illegally receiving money from regional PAN and PRI governments, El Universal reports (spanish).  

El Universal reports of various allegations about narco-finance, organized crime, and overspending in the municipality of Playas de Rosarito.

A nationwide survey of citizens’ thoughts regarding what of Mexico’s electoral and campaign finance system needed to be reformed had been conducted by IFE (Federal Electoral Institute) to inform Congress in their consideration of reform. The reform has since passed at the federal level and needs to get the approval of a majority of Mexico’s 32 states. The […]

This week two steps were taken towards reducing the amount of money spent in Mexican federal elections.
First, a proposal to reduce the public financing of parties by 50% during presidential elections and reduce the same by 70% during non-concurrent legislative elections was introduced into congress. This initiative also would reduce the length of the official […]

Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge made internationally famous for, among other things, bringing human rights charges against Chile’s Pinochet, recommended in his interview with La Jornada (spanish) that Mexico establish clear controls over the political finance of political parties and to establish free tv time for parties during elections. He also said he was not […]

In the Mexican state of Zacatecas, the electoral authority is testing a new technique for controlling the amounts of spending and enforcing spending limits - they purchased all the television and radio time parties are allocated to use and prohibit parties from purchasing any media time by other means, be it with their state-provided or […]

Latinnews.com ($) reports:
On 22 May the Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE) fined all the registered political parties varying sums for failing to follow the rules in the 2006 elections.
The fines were nothing like those dished out after the 2000 elections when the defeated Partido Revolucionario Institucional was crippled after it was convicted of trying to use […]

IFE and the Finance Ministry in Mexico have begun to audit all the privately-raised income of candidates and parties for last July’s federal parliarmentary elections to see if they illegally received or used money. This audit entails the examination of the approximate US$120M raised privately by the parties; they also received for last year’s election […]

On tuesday, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) of Mexico published the “minimum costs” for the campaigns of federal deputies (in the single-member districts), senators, and presidents for 2007 (El Universal). Not that there are federal elections in Mexico this year - rather, these “mininum costs” are the inflation-indexed amounts used to determine the amount of public funding […]

Representatives from political parties met at a seminar (along with electoral and legal professionals) on Monday to discuss reducing the cost of campaigns and politics in Mexico. Elections in Mexico have been considered notoriously expensive, and perhaps reducing their cost is a good thing, but whether that can happen may be another matter. According to […]

While in Argentina, parties are passing laws to raise the amount of money they can spend in elections, in Mexico, parties are looking for ways to reduce the amount that is spent. Parties in Mexico receive a large state subsidy both annually and during electoral periods (i.e. twice during election years). On Thursday, all 8 […]

EU monitors that oversaw the elections in Mexico this past July called the elections fair and transparent, but too expensive (more, in spanish). Elections in Mexico are notoriously expensive, in part a result of the PRI’s extensive use of state resources during campaigns pre-1997 (during their long single-party control of the state) and the gradual […]