SAN ANTONIO - Less than 1 percent of the eligible voters registered for their first chance to vote by absentee ballot in Mexico's presidential election, authorities said Sunday.

Voting advocates said the low registration demonstrated a need for fundamental changes to the program, but election officials called it a good first step toward greater democracy.

"If this very same information had been out there for nine months, the turnout would have been different," said Pilar Alvarez of the Federal Electoral Institute, the independent government agency which oversees elections in Mexico.

The expatriate voting law was passed last summer by Mexico's Congress and allows citizens abroad to vote in the July 2 presidential election. Citizens were given until Sunday to apply for an absentee ballot.

But of an estimated 4 million eligible voters worldwide, Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute said only about 18,600 participated.

Among the biggest problems, critics said, was that the required voter ID cards were issued only in Mexico.

Gabriela Gambino, 23, who lives in Albuquerque, N.M., but is originally from Michoacan, Mexico, said most illegal immigrants would be leery of making the trip to Mexico to obtain cards because of travel costs and fear they would not be able to return to this country.

The Mexican Embassy and consulates in the United States remained open on Sunday to distribute registration forms.

The consulate in San Antonio drew only a handful of people, including the Rev. Frank Garcia of Amistad Cristiana church, a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States. He couldn't register for lack of a voter ID card but said he passed out forms to congregation members who do have cards.

A group of Houston business owners organized weeks of voter drives that they said netted more than 1,400 registrations in Texas.

However, about 60 percent of the people who showed interest had to be turned away because they didn't have voter ID cards, said Jose Luis Rodriguez, who led the Houston group.

Alvarez, the official from Mexico's election agency, said it would be expensive and logistically difficult to issue voting credentials outside Mexico and still guarantee protection from fraud.

Roberto Rosas, a San Antonio law professor who lobbied in Mexico City for the absentee system last year, will be among those asking Mexico's Congress this year to issue voter cards in the U.S. and elsewhere.

"If they only give it out in Mexico, the numbers will remain low," said Rosas, a consultant for Mexico's foreign affairs department. "This is a lesson so we know what to do the next time."

AP writers Felicia Fonseca, Pam Easton and Giovanna Dell'Orto contributed to this report.

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