Between April 18 and June 1, 458 candidates — eight independents and 450 members of the nine national political parties — will campaign for election to the Constituent Assembly of Mexico City. The election will take place on June 5.
During this time, 3,690 30-second television ads will play, said Arturo Sánchez Gutiérrez of the National Electoral Institute (INE) on his twitter @ArturoSanchezG.
He explained that each political party will be given 41 minutes of airtime during the campaign, while the INE will have 48 minutes of airtime between the end of the campaigns and the election, or between June 2 and 4.
The INE will offer campaign funds of 10.2 million pesos for each political party, while a the same amount will be divided between the eight independent candidates. Each independent candidate will be given 1.3 million pesos ($745,804).
The party candidates will be able to raise an additional 10.2 million pesos; the total spending limit will be 20 million pesos. For independent candidates, the spending limit will be three million pesos.
Ciro Murayama Rendón, of the INE, said that the 32 independent candidates had turned in a total of more than 3.3 million signatures to qualify for the race. Almost all of the signatures were ruled to be valid.
Only eight of the 74 aspiring independent candidates collected enough signatures to appear on the ballot in June.
The INE approved the registration of Lorena Osornio Elizondo, who, in addition to being the only female independent candidate, also collected the most valid signatures, with 91,231.
The other independent candidates are Fernando Hiram Zurita Jiménez, Xavier González Zirión, Sergio Gabriel García Colorado, Sergio Abraham Méndez Moissen, Ismael Figueroa Flores and Julio Cázares Ríos.
On Aug. 23, the INE will announce the names of 60 of the 100 members of the Constituent Assembly. Those 60 will be elected through proportional representation.
Of the 40 remaining delegates, six will be designated by President Enrique Peña Nieto, six by Mexico City Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera, and 14 each by the House of Deputies and the Senate.
The Constituent Assembly will be installed on Sept. 15 and will aim to approve the Constitution of Mexico City by Jan. 31, 2017, with a two-thirds supermajority.
On election day 88,300 people will participate as election officials, who will be in charge of receiving and counting the votes of the 7.4 million eligible voters, 53 percent of which are women.
