Posted on 07/08/2006 2:43:42 PM PDT by baltoga
IN 1986, I OBSERVED an election in Mexico's northern state of Chihuahua and learned almost everything I would ever need to know about election fraud. Last week, I observed elections again in Mexico, but this time, I concluded that the United States and the world could learn much from Mexico about how to conduct and judge a free and fair election.
This might come as a shock. After all, the election looked messy from the outside. It took four days before Mexico's Federal Election Institute, or IFE, announced a winner — Felipe Calderon, the leader of the conservative National Action Party — by the slimmest of margins (0.58%, or about 244,000 votes out of 41 million). Calderon did not bother to wait for the announcement to proclaim his triumph, and his main rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, also announced victory and quickly challenged the IFE's conclusion.
Close elections are always dangerous. Even in long-standing democracies like the U.S., a close election (like in 2000) often leaves the losing party resentful and angry. In new democracies, political suspicions often collide with administrative incapacity during close elections, leading to unrest or violence.
It is too soon to know whether Mexico will avoid these pitfalls. But its chances of doing so are greater because, in the last decade, it has constructed some of the most sophisticated electoral institutions and procedures in the democratic world. I compared the electoral systems of North America, and the good news is that the U.S. came in third. The bad news is that there are only three countries in North America.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Mexico DOES, IN FACT, have a more solid electoral system now than we do. Are you telling me you WOULDN'T like for us to have picture IDs for all voters? Have those IDs checked multiple times? Require that they exactly match an ID presented during registration? Require that absentee ballots be requested 6 months prior to the election, and etc?
"Mexico has multiple safeguards to ensure that citizens vote only once, including a list with the photos of all citizens, indelible ink on voters' thumbs and a state-of-the-art, biometric ID card."
If any of those were tried here, the ACLU along with the usual cast of characters would raise bloody hell..discriminatory and all that..
Looking at his credentials...
ROBERT A. PASTOR is a professor at American University in Washington and director of its Center for Democracy and Election Management. He is also director of the Jimmy Carter-James Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform.
"I compared the electoral systems of North America, and the good news is that the U.S. came in third. The bad news is that there are only three countries in North America."
Interesting, I compared traditional newspapers in L.A. and the L.A. Times came in forth...the bad news is there are only three papers.
Fourth, U.S. voter registration lists are organized poorly by counties or states with very different ID requirements. Mexico, by contrast, has registered 95% of its citizens, and it audits and updates the list at least every year. Mexico has multiple safeguards to ensure that citizens vote only once, including a list with the photos of all citizens, indelible ink on voters' thumbs and a state-of-the-art, biometric ID card.
Which party's elected officials and judges prevent this from happening in the US? Could that be the Dems? And why do they want to prevent ID checks and allow multiple voting? Could it be that the Dems only hold on to their new equal representation by vote fraud?
Sixth, in the last elections, the U.S. was distracted by inaccurate, media-run exit polls.
And which party is the US press largely allied with? Any chance that they intentionally bend their exit polls to affect the election?
No I'm in favor of picture ID, but Canada and Mexico have popular votes, while the USA we have an electoral college vote.
So many of the differences the author points out just don't apply.
Re the barf alert, I agree. The 2000 election DID leave a lot of people very angry and resentful. That is a fact, not leftist spin. I think it's a good example of what can happen in hotly contested elections where the result comes down to a few people in a few counties.
I would LOVE to see photo I.D.s required to vote. I think most Americans would agree with this, and the huge uproar on the left if it were proposed would open even more eyes to the fact that the democrats are the party of election fraud.
This is the guy that wrote the CFR point paper on a North American Union. Somehow Jerome Corsi decided his testimony in Congress amounted to the Bush Administration wanting to join a North American Union.
The points are reasonable, but they apply to a popular vote.
The USA for better or worst is an electoral college vote.
Link: http://www.electoral-vote.com/2004/info/electoral-college.html
Here's all you need to know about the author:
Dr. Robert A. Pastor has established two new institutions that draw together teaching, research, and service on key global themes for the 21st century - democracy and integration. The new Center for Democracy and Election Management trains students, political leaders, journalists, and election managers from the US and abroad. The Center for North American Studies educates and conducts research about Canada, Mexico, and the United States with the aim of understanding and building a North American Community.
Dr. Pastor was Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor for Latin America (1977-81). He was a Fellow and Founding Director of the Carter Center's Latin American and Caribbean Program and the Democracy and China Election Projects. At The Carter Center, he founded and served as the Executive Secretary of the Council of Freely-Elected Heads of Government, a group of 32 leaders of the Americas, chaired by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. This Council mediated elections in more than thirty countries around the world.
His book, Toward a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World for the New (2001); Exiting the Whirlpool: U.S. Foreign Policy Toward Latin America and the Caribbean (2001); and A Century's Journey: How the Great Powers Shape the World (1999). Pastor was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malaysia, a Fulbright Professor in Mexico, and a Visiting Professor at Harvard University.
Dr. Pastor has been a foreign policy advisor to each of the Democratic Presidential Candidates since 1976 and was Chair of the Working Group on North America for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. President Bill Clinton nominated him to be Ambassador to Panama, and he served as the Senior Advisor to the Carter-Nunn-Powell Mission to restore constitutional government in Haiti in 1994. He is the Vice Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on North America, and he is also Executive Director of the Commission on Federal Election Reform.
Who was it who was saying "You don't need ID's to vote"? Yes, yes, I do believe it was a Democrat..
The deep question is how do you make Mexico a first class country. This is something that Vincente Fox brought up frequently in May and June.
The trouble is that no one quite sees that the very best thing we could do for Mexico is to send their now well trained citizens home.
Suddenly Mexico would have a skilled workforce who knew something about how a world class country worked.
Think these folk would propel a great leap forward for Mexico?
I do.
Basically the ruling class in Mexico is preditory to its own detriment and will not change of its own volition--even if those changes were in its own interest. But it can be forced to change.
The Mexicans in the USA have had the picture of what a well run country looks like tatooed on the back of their eyeballs. And they'll have an idea of how to get there. Send them back to Mexico and they'll get a revolution in Mexico that'll do that country some good.
The shock troops for that would be the 12 million repatriated Mexican citizens. Having seen what a well run country looks like they would not want to be stuffed back in the old wineskin.
Also, Mexico will need a stronger dose of of the Peruvian Hernando Desoto ideas. Basically DeSoto asked the question why are some countries poor and some countries rich. The basic answers is that in poor countries most of their economy is informal or off the books and their property--ie--land is not formally recognized. (Therefor these countries have no borrowing power and property has no value that can be transferred or liquidated.)De Soto's solutions are being implimented successfully in countries around the world. http://www.ild.org.pe/home.htm
Hernando de Soto's organization was invited to Mexico and did some work on the question. He says that only 6 percent of Mexican enterprises are legal, the rest are informal or off the books. So how do you reverse that so that only 6% of the economy is informal -- as is the case the USA. De Soto would provide the ideas around which the 12 million american trained Mexican returnees could rally.
There's something more.
I follow water desalination research pretty closely. While water desalination costs have dropped to about a third of what they were 15 years ago--the rate at which prices will drop over the next seven years will accelerate considerably. imo in even the next five years we will see desalination costs drop to 1/10th of today's costs. Or even faster than the fall the 3/4 fall that the LLNL researchers suggest.
http://www.physorg.com/news67262683.html
Basically, the foundations are being laid today to make it economically feasable to to turn all the world's deserts green. (The proper way to look at this is to recall that cars, tv's and computers were at first rich men's toys but when prices came down they changed the world. Desalinised water is still relatively speaking -- a rich man's toy. But when the price drops sufficiently--desalinised water will change the world--because most deserts are right beside the ocean. Pumping the water 1000 miles inland will require that the scientists collapse the cost cracking out hydrogen from water. I think that this nut will be cracked sooner than desalination.)
imho cheap desalinised water will do for the republicans (if they can get this on their agenda or even the democrats if the pubbies drop the ball) what the great dam building projects & the tva of the 1930's & 40's did for democrats because 1/3 of the US is deserts. We would increase the habitable size of the USA by 1/3.
Dirt cheap desalinised water will also do things like make it possible to double the habitable size of Mexico. Cheap water is no magic bullet but it will give the Mexican Nationalists a way to dream while the Mexican people do the real work.
A first generation crop that might be appropriate would be one that India has chosen for ist biofuels program. The crop is Jatropha Curcas - a bush. This shrub produces a seed containing oil. This oil works well for biodiesel production ( see http://www.d1plc.com ).
Jatropha Curcas is native to Mexico and Central America (probably originated there). This shrub can be grown in large plantations on marginal soil - assuming some reasonable amount of, say, desalinated water).
Think Jatropha Curas could take up the slack from current oil production? I do.
But years before the USA collapsed the cost of desalinised water--the USA could change the future by announcing that the goal of American research is to kill the cost of water desalination and transport so that it becomes economically possible to turn the world's deserts green. Reagan changed the future by announcing star wars. Bush could change the future by announcing the plan for the greening of the world's deserts.
And desalinated water in tandem with repatriation of now skilled Mexican citizens would propel Mexico into being a world class country.
There is a winner here. The winner is Mexico.
The US profits too by having a prosperous politically stable country with a broad middle class to the south as we do to the north.
Actually, Mexico requires photo ID and I think it also requires a thumbprint. So yes, their procedures are better than ours. But guess which party is opposed to ID requirements in the US???
Just today a Dem judge in (IIRC) Georgia threw out their voter law requiring photo ID because he said it was burdensome and harrassing for the voters.
There are a lot of things wrong with Mexico, but give them credit where credit is due.
Imagine how many of our Rats would lose elections if no dead people voted for them!
Or if an election wasn't recounted 3 or 4 times until the Democrat won. The Mexicans know what they are doing.
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