Mexico’s National Electoral Institute said proposals to choose its governing councilors through direct elections would make the appointments process “more difficult and rough,” warning that such a change could erode the body’s autonomy. INE President Guadalupe Taddei Zavala told reporters after an extraordinary session of the General Council on 15 July that the current system—under which the lower house of Congress selects council members—gives the institute clear start-and-end mandates and should not be conflated with the popular vote now used for judges and magistrates. Taddei also rejected speculation that the institute will hand the Padrón Electoral to the federal government or merge it with the planned biometric CURP identity card. “There is no legal basis compelling the INE to deliver the voter roll,” she said, adding that any request to combine the databases would have to be decided collectively by the institute’s 11-member council. During the meeting the council received a progress report on the extraordinary 2024-25 judicial elections, noting the completion of all 1,586 scheduled activities and the successful organization of votes for 1,800 local judicial positions across 19 states. Taddei described the exercise as a demonstration of the INE’s capacity to manage complex electoral processes and reiterated that safeguarding the institute’s independence remains essential ahead of an expected electoral-reform package from President Claudia Sheinbaum.