Throughout history, authoritarian rulers have done all they can to bring judiciaries to heel. In Latin America, the governments of El Salvador, Bolivia and Nicaragua have moved to take over the courts. In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has purged thousands of judges and prosecutors. Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines removed his country’s chief justice and packed the Supreme Court with his allies. President Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe gave himself unchecked authority to appoint the most senior judges in the country. In Hungary, Viktor Orban took control over judicial appointments.

Mexico is about to join the club. Following a controversial constitutional reform that the outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, rammed through Congress in September, Mexicans are expected to go to the polls on Sunday and deliver an unprecedented vote to replace half the federal bench — 881 federal judges in all, including the nine justices on the Supreme Court — plus hundreds more in state courts. The other half of the judiciary will be replaced in a second round of voting in 2027.

The process is being sold as a mechanism to clean out an intensely corrupt justice system and bring more democracy to Mexico. But given the ruling Morena party’s overwhelming popularity among Mexican voters, the election will serve mostly to bring the judiciary in line with Morena’s interests.

Most of the roughly 3,400 candidates for federal judgeships were chosen by Morena — including about a third of those vying for positions on the new Judicial Discipline Tribunal, which will have the power to remove judges at all levels. Befuddled voters facing ballots with hundreds of names will probably take their cues from candidates’ known allegiances. Morena is already mobilizing its political machine to elect friendly judges. Members of the party have posted lists of preferred candidates on the internet — to help voters make up their minds.

As Margaret Satterthwaite, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, noted in a report to the Mexican president last year, voting for judges could put the country’s judicial independence and impartiality at risk, as “political considerations could easily take priority over a candidate’s objective merits.”

Mexico’s justice system is undoubtedly in need of reform. Mexicans don’t trust the legal authorities. In one of the deadliest countries in the world, most people don’t even bother to report crimes. And yet the blame rests not on judges but largely on prosecutors who are unable or unwilling to investigate, let alone prosecute, crimes and human rights abuses. In 2022, only 16 percent of criminal investigations were resolved.

Voting for judges won’t do much to address the bottlenecks. What it will do is remove Mexico’s only remaining check on the power of the executive. Across the six years of López Obrador’s presidency, the courts proved capable of getting in his way, shooting down a variety of presidential initiatives. They risked becoming a thorn in the side of his handpicked successor, Claudia Sheinbaum.

For the United States, this situation should be of more than academic concern. Through their shared border and partnership in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, Mexico and the U.S. have mutual interests in issues from trade and migration to organized crime and national security.

The prospect of a judiciary beholden to the government is likely to stunt Mexico’s economic growth by keeping foreign investors at bay. It is also in tension with provisions in the USMCA that require independent tribunals to settle various disputes. And Mexico’s limited capacity to deal with organized crime will be further compromised if, as critics fear, judicial candidates linked to criminal groups make it onto federal or state benches.

Most problematic, though, is what Mexico’s drift signals for the future of liberal democracy, not only south of the border but also around the world.