Home > 2.4 Complaints and appeals > MEXICO - General Law on Electoral Institutions and Procedures of Mexico
 
 
 
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Article 440
 

1. The local electoral laws should consider the rules for the sanctioning procedures, taking into account the following bases:


a) The classification of sanctioning procedures into ordinary procedures that initiated due to misconduct committed within and outside of the electoral processes, and special sanctioning procedures initiated due to misconduct committed within the electoral processes;


b) The persons and conducts that can be sanctioned;


c) The rules for the opening, processing, competent bodies and investigation of both procedures;


d) The procedure to rule on the remission of files to the Electoral Tribunal for their resolution, both on federal and local level, and


e) The rules for the ordinary sanctioning procedure by the Local Public Bodies on frivolous complaints, applicable both on the federal and local level, understood as:



  1. The claims and promotions that include statements which cannot be legally supported, due to it being obvious and evident that they are not protected by the law;

  2. Those that refer to facts that turn out to be false or inexistent simply based on carefully reading the writing and that do not present the minimum of evidence to prove their truthfulness;

  3. Those that refer to facts that do not constitute an electoral misconduct or violation, and

  4. Those that are only based on journalistic opinion pieces or news articles that generalize a situation and without being able to accredit their truthfulness by other means.


2. The sanction imposed, where applicable, should assess the degree of frivolity of the complaint and the damage that it could generate with the attention of this types of complaints to the electoral bodies.