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Nobody knows, but you left out a really important group, people on vacation.  

No, Jules, vacationers aren't an "important" part of any real assessment of systematic electoral exclusion.

At this point, Jules, I think Al is right.  It's as if you just argue for the sake of arguing.  What exactly is your point, Jules?  That the privileged who take vacations are systematically discriminated against by the electoral system because they have to stay in town for election day if they want to vote???  Oh, the injustice.

For God's sake, Jules, you can't compare the systematic electoral exclusion of thousands upon thousands of poor migrants (both inside and outside Mexico) to the minor inconvenience of not being able to vacation on election day.  I'm sorry, Jules, but when the debate devolves to this level of absurdity, it's clear that someone is riding cloud nine.

The argument that extending voting to people outside the country would result in more votes for the PAN was made before the new policies went into effect. Many commentators here dismissed the whole project as just another trick by Fox to increase his party's vote. As far as I know, the PRD did not raise any objections to the rules that made absentee voting from outside the country so difficult.

That's not what I recall, Jules.  Reports in the Stockton Record and the San Antonio Express indicated that the PRD attempted to facilitate the voting process for migrants in the United States but that Mexican consulates did not assist with the process.

From the Stockton Record (October 8, 2005):    

A Mexican state legislator urged leaders of Stockton's migrant community to help educate and register migrants in the United States who are eligible to vote in Mexico's presidential election in July.

...

Jesus Martinez-Saldana, a member of the Michoacan state congress in Mexico, met with farm labor organizers from Stockton this week to make sure Mexicans living in the United States understand the complicated, step-by-step, absentee-voting process. He hopes to help Mexicans living here understand what is required to cast absentee ballots in the July 2 election.

"This is the very first time migrants are allowed to vote," said Martinez-Saldana, a former Fresno State professor and a member of Mexico's Party of the Democratic Revolution. "It's a right that took many years to obtain, and we want to make sure they enjoy that right."

...

As many as 60,000 immigrants from Michoacan live in the county, said Luis Magaña, head of the Stockton group meeting with the legislator. That's more than 25 percent of the more than 200,000 people of Mexican descent that live in San Joaquin County, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.

...

Magaña's group will help eligible voters fill out requests for ballots.

"The consulate officials don't help people fill out the forms," Magaña said. "Someone has to help people do that."

From the San Antonio Express (October 19, 2005):

For three weeks, Laredo produce importer José Carmona has been on a whirlwind tour of Texas, one that could spell a direct challenge to Mexico's election law and change the pace and tone of its upcoming presidential campaign.

Carmona, a Mexican citizen, has logged more than 2,800 miles across the state on a mission for the Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, under the banner of an organization he leads called the Red Paisanos, Spanish for the Countryman Network.

The network is informing Mexicans about the absentee voting process for the July 2006 presidential election — the first to allow them to vote from abroad. But it's also touting the PRD's presumptive candidate, former Mexico City mayor and early frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

...

In recent weeks, Carmona and Nuevo Laredo city councilman Francisco Chavira, a PRD member, have pulled a black trailer emblazoned with the PRD logo to El Paso, Eagle Pass, Cotulla, Laredo, Carrizo Springs, McAllen and twice to San Antonio.

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