Morena Says Somos Party Holds Confidential Electoral Data
Morena's leader says the Somos party has sensitive INE data through ex-officials, without proof. Somos denies wrongdoing; here is the dispute so far.
Ariadna Montiel, president of Morena, Mexico’s governing party, said on Nov. 10 that the new party Somos has sensitive and confidential information belonging to the National Electoral Institute (INE) and its predecessor, the IFE, according to El Financiero. She presented no evidence for the claim.
Montiel, who previously served as secretary of Welfare, argued that at least 16 advisers and operatives of Somos once worked in what she called the “golden bureaucracy” of the INE and the IFE. That, she said, is how the party came to hold the data.
Who Montiel named
She called it “delicate” that people who once ran electoral operations, voter rolls, voter ID cards and quick counts at the electoral referee now lead a political party. She listed ten people, among them:
- Lorenzo Córdova, a member of the Somos citizens’ advisory council and former INE president.
- Leonardo Valdés, head of the party’s democratic studies center and former president of the now-defunct IFE.
- Marco Antonio Baños, Somos representative before the INE and a former electoral councilor.
- Edmundo Jacobo Molina, director of the party’s training center and former executive secretary of the INE.
- René Miranda Jaimes, a former head of the INE’s voter registry office who also coordinated the quick count and the PREP, the preliminary results system.
- Rodrigo Morales Manzanares, coordinator of the party’s national electoral commission, who led the INE’s technical committee on district mapping from 2014 to 2023.
The remaining names she gave include Ana Laura Martínez de Lara, who handles finance and administration at Somos after leading the INE’s personnel office, and Carlos Alberto Ferrer Silva, the party’s legal director and a former head of the INE’s electoral disputes unit. Roberto Heycher Cardiel Soto, now Somos secretary for electoral operations and alliances, once served as interim head of the INE’s executive secretariat. César Ledezma Ugalde, a Somos representative on the national voter registry oversight commission, once ran logistics for the PREP.
The lawsuit behind the exchange
Montiel’s remarks come days after Somos sued President Claudia Sheinbaum for moral damages. The suit responds to statements from the Anticorruption and Good Government Ministry that tied the party to an alleged corruption scheme at the INE.
Sheinbaum defended her position at her daily news conference on Nov. 6. “I only stated facts,” she said, adding that she stands by her words and has evidence for them.
The federal government has pointed to alleged irregularities in contracts awarded to companies connected with Alfredo Hernández Casillas, a supplier of electoral materials. He won large contracts from the INE and from local electoral bodies known as OPLE.
Somos rejected the accusation. The party said its members had no part in the companies named and did not hold INE posts connected to the contested contracts.
Sheinbaum also said the irregularities did not begin under Guadalupe Taddei, the former INE president, and that the questioned contracts go back to earlier administrations.
Why it matters
The dispute puts the governing party and a new rival in open conflict over who controls electoral knowledge. Montiel’s claim concerns access to voter rolls, voter ID card data and results systems, all of which underpin how elections are run in Mexico. Reports so far do not include any evidence that confidential files were taken, and Somos has denied involvement in the contracts at issue.
Two separate matters are now running side by side: the contract allegations the government has made public, and Morena’s separate claim about data. Somos has answered the first by denying any role. The sources do not report a Somos reply to the data claim.
Readers can watch for the court handling of the moral damages suit and for any formal complaint that backs up Montiel’s statement with documents.
Sources: telegra.ph, El Financiero
