Posted on 07/02/2006 8:55:04 PM PDT by stan_sipple
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (Reuters) - Thousands of expatriate Mexicans streamed south of the U.S. border on Sunday to vote in their homeland in a tight race with high stakes for crime-weary border residents.
A large stream of U.S.-based Mexicans trekked on foot and piled into cars to vote in a string of gritty border towns from Tijuana in the west to Nuevo Laredo below Texas.
Electoral authorities were taken by surprise at the number of expatriates who showed up.
"It's a very close-fought race ... and if we don't vote, we can't hope to decide the outcome," said Luis Tovar, 28, a shipping agent who drove from San Antonio, Texas, to vote in Nuevo Laredo, just over the Rio Grande.
Many waited for hours in the sweltering heat to cast their ballots in a fight between leftist front runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and conservative rival Felipe Calderon. The leftist had a lead of just two points in opinion polls after a campaign fought over job creation, the economy and graft.
Only 40,000 of an estimated 6 million to 7 million Mexicans of voting age in the United States registered to vote by mail mostly because the paperwork was difficult.
Unlike California, where all they have to do is show up and claim to be a legal voter . . .
Quick, lock the gate.
Quick! Lock the border while they're out!
Most of them probably voted PRD (socialist)...
If I've got it figgured out, there is no other choice, as in Marxist vs. Socialist.
L.O.L....the ebb and flow of the border...attack New York??...head back South pronto!!!!
Wonder if dead democrates and other friends of Jimmah Carter get to vote as well. They seem to jet set to every election around the globe. But they usually pull the despot party level.
But . . . but . . . . but, we weren't having an election!!!!
When I worked at GM we had those one way gates. They would let people out, but not back in. Lets put them on the Mexican border.
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