Mexican lawmakers approve postal absentee voting News
Mexican lawmakers approve postal absentee voting

[JURIST] Mexican lawmakers Tuesday approved a law permitting Mexicans living abroad to vote by mail in next July's presidential election. The lower house of Congress passed the measure 455 to 6, with 6 abstentions. The measure has already been passed by the Mexican Senate [official website] and will be presented to President Vincente Fox [official profile] for signing, which he has promised. Approximately 11 million Mexicans, or 14% of the country's population, live abroad with most of that number residing in the United States, but up to now they have been effectively unable to participate in the Mexican political process. Despite the law's popularity, some have expressed fears that the country's notoriously corrupt and slow postal service will be charged with mailing out the ballots. AP has more. So-called "postal voting" has run into problems in other Western democracies, most recently including the United Kingdom [JURIST report], where the mails are considered relatively secure.

THIS DAY @ LAW

President Johnson signed law against burning draft cards

On August 31, 1965, President Johnson signed a law making the burning of draft cards a federal offense subject to a five-year prison sentence and $1000 fine. In response to the law and in protest of the war in Vietnam, the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam staged the first public burning of a draft card in the United States on October 15, 1965. The constitutionality of the federal law was upheld in 1968 by the US Supreme Court in US v. O'Brien.

Gdansk Agreement reached

On August 31, 1980, the communist government of Poland and labor leaders settled the Gdansk Agreement. The accord settled a summer of labor strikes at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland. With the Agreement, Poland became the first communist country to allow the creation of an independent labor union, which was called Solidarity. Solidarity then became the driving force that ended communism in Poland. Learn more about the history of Solidarity.