MEXICO CITY, Aug 24, (AP): Mexico’s electoral institute voted Friday to give the governing Morena party and its allies about 73% of seats in the lower house of Congress, though the coalition won less than 60% of the votes in the June 2 elections. The ruling, which can be challenged in court, would give the governing coalition the two-thirds majority it needs for the Chamber of Deputies to approve changes in Mexico's constitution.

If the ruling stands, Morena and it allies would have about 364 seats in the 500-seat body. Critics said that would give Morena more power in Congress than it won at the voting booth. The dispute involves a law that assigns some seats in Congress on the basis of proportional representation. That was designed to give smaller parties some seats in Congress, based on their national vote percentage, even if they couldn’t win individual congressional district races. But the law also stipulates that the proportional seats can't be used to give any party a majority in Congress.

Morena apparently got around that by "lending” some of its winning congressional district candidates to two allied smaller parties. The smaller parties aren't subject to the no-majority rule, but they vote in lockstep with Morena. The institute's governing council voted that proportional representation rules apply only to parties individually and without taking into account the effect that might have on a majority coalition.

While Morena and its allies fell short of a two-thirds majority in the Senate, whose approval is also needed for constitutional changes, the coalition fell short only by two or three seats in that body and could feasibly win the needed votes from a smaller party. Outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his successor, fellow Morena member Claudia Sheinbaum, have vowed to use the two-thirds majority to pursue 20 constitutional changes, including making all judges run for election.