Mexico elects its president by direct popular vote in a single nationwide round held on the first Sunday of June every six years. Whoever receives the most votes wins, with no runoff and no minimum threshold. The winner serves one six-year term, called the sexenio, and is barred for life from holding the office again.1Constitute Project. Mexico 1917 (rev. 2015) Constitution
One Round, One Term, No Coming Back
Mexico uses a simple plurality system. The candidate with the highest vote total wins outright, even if that total falls well short of a majority. There is no second round.1Constitute Project. Mexico 1917 (rev. 2015) Constitution
The no-reelection rule is absolute. It doesn’t matter whether someone served a full term, stepped in as an interim president, or held the office on a provisional basis. Once you’ve been president, you can never be president again.
Who Can Run
The Constitution sets four core requirements for a presidential candidate. You must be a natural-born Mexican citizen with at least one Mexican-born parent. You must be at least 35 years old on election day. You must have lived in Mexico for at least 20 years, including the entire year before the election.1Constitute Project. Mexico 1917 (rev. 2015) Constitution
Several categories of people are excluded outright. Active-duty military personnel cannot run. Neither can ministers of any religious denomination. Senior officials, including cabinet secretaries, attorneys general, and state governors, have to resign their positions at least six months before the election if they want to be on the ballot. Miss that deadline and the candidacy is in jeopardy.
How Candidates Reach the Ballot
Most candidates come through political parties. Parties choose their nominees through their own internal rules, which range from open primaries to conventions to leadership decisions. Coalitions are common: several parties agree to back a single candidate and combine their support on the ballot.
Running as an independent is legal but hard. An independent presidential candidate has to gather signatures equal to roughly 1% of voters on the Federal Registry, spread across at least 17 of Mexico’s 32 states, and reach at least 1% of registered voters in each of those states. For the 2024 election, that meant collecting more than 960,000 valid signatures. No independent has cleared that bar and won the presidency.
Who Can Vote and What They Need
Any Mexican citizen aged 18 or older with, in the language of the law, “an honest way of living” is eligible to vote. Citizenship by birth or by naturalization both count, and dual nationals living in Mexico are included.2Library of Congress. Mexico: Voting Requirements
Voting requires a specific document: the credencial para votar, issued by the National Electoral Institute (INE). It’s the mandatory voter ID at the polls, and it doubles as Mexico’s most widely accepted general-purpose ID for banking and travel. Getting one means showing up in person at an INE office with proof of Mexican nationality (a birth certificate or passport), a photo ID, and proof of residence.3Instituto Nacional Electoral – INE. Electoral Registry Without the credencial, you will not be allowed to vote.
Political rights can be suspended for certain criminal sentences and for being a fugitive from justice. But in 2019 Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that people held in pretrial detention who have not been convicted keep the right to vote under the presumption of innocence. Some states began putting that into practice in the 2024 election.
Voting From Outside Mexico
Mexicans living abroad, including the large community in the United States, can vote in presidential elections if they hold a valid credencial and register with the INE during a set enrollment window. For 2024, that window ran from October 2023 to February 2024.4Gobierno de Mexico. Mexican Voter Registration Program Abroad 2023-2024
Registered voters abroad have three ways to cast a ballot:
- Internet voting through an electronic ballot available during a set window, with login credentials sent by email.
- Postal voting, using a physical ballot package that has to arrive back in Mexico before election day.
- In-person voting at select consulates in cities with large Mexican populations.
Overseas ballots are counted with domestic ones and roll into the official totals.
Election Day
Presidential elections fall on the first Sunday of June. Polling stations are not staffed by government employees. They’re run by ordinary citizens, called funcionarios de casilla, selected through a lottery-style process. Serving when picked is a civic duty under Mexican law.
The mechanics at the polls are simple. You present your credencial. Poll workers check it against the voter roll. You receive paper ballots, mark them privately in a cardboard booth, and drop each one in its box. Before you leave, a poll worker inks your thumb. The ink is a Mexican invention, a clear liquid that reacts with skin cells within seconds to leave a dark stain that can’t be washed off and only fades as skin sheds over the following days. That’s what prevents a second vote.
How Results Are Counted and Certified
Election Night: Preliminary Results
When polls close, the citizen poll workers open the ballot boxes and count every vote at the polling station, in front of party representatives and observers. The tallies go on official sheets. The INE then runs a system called PREP, the Programa de Resultados Electorales Preliminares, which starts publishing at 8:00 p.m. and runs for up to 24 hours. PREP isn’t a projection or a sample. It aims to digitize every tally sheet from every polling station, refreshing at least three times an hour and publishing both the numbers and the scanned image of each sheet so anyone can check.
PREP results carry no legal weight. They can’t be used to challenge an election. But they usually make the outcome clear within hours.
The Official Count and Final Word
The binding count happens in the days after the election, when INE district councils go through the tallies in detail. If irregularities turn up at particular polling stations, ballots there can be recounted. The candidate with the most votes wins.1Constitute Project. Mexico 1917 (rev. 2015) Constitution
The final authority is the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (TEPJF). It rules on legal challenges, audits campaign spending against the legal limits, verifies that the winning candidate meets the constitutional requirements, and then formally certifies the results. Only after the TEPJF certifies does Mexico have an official president-elect.
Campaign Rules That Shape the Race
The election calendar is broken into phases. Precampaigns come first, when parties select nominees, and they run for a limited time. The formal campaign period for a presidential race lasts roughly 90 days, filled with rallies, media appearances, and organized debates. A mandatory quiet period sits between the phases, during which campaigning is prohibited.
Financing is designed to keep public money dominant. The INE calculates a public financing pool for parties, splitting 30% equally among qualifying parties and 70% in proportion to each party’s share of the most recent congressional vote. In a presidential election year, parties receive an additional 50% of their ordinary funding for campaign expenses.5Instituto Nacional Electoral. Political Parties Juridical and Financing and Conditions of Equity in the Electoral Contest Private contributions are capped, the INE sets campaign spending ceilings and audits the books, and sanctions can follow violations.
Criminal law backs the electoral rules. Buying or soliciting votes carries six months to three years in prison. Campaign contributions made with illicit funds or above the legal limits carry five to fifteen years, and the sentence can be increased by up to 50% if the offense happened during an active campaign.6Library of Congress. Mexico: Senate Passes New Electoral Offenses Law A specialized prosecutor inside the federal Attorney General’s office handles investigations.
From Election to Inauguration
The Constitution now sets the inauguration on October 1, about four months after the June vote. That’s a recent change. For most of modern Mexican history, presidents took office on December 1. The new October 1 date was first applied when Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in in 2024.1Constitute Project. Mexico 1917 (rev. 2015) Constitution
The incoming president takes the oath before the Congress of the Union, or before the Permanent Committee if Congress is in recess. The sexenio begins the moment the oath is taken. Six years, one term, no return.