Now the Leftist Has the Lead in Mexico

Los Angeles Times ^ | 07/06/06 | By Héctor Tobar and Richard Boudreaux

[garbageseeker]

MEXICO CITY — With more than 90% of an official recount concluded late Wednesday, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador held a slim lead over conservative Felipe Calderon in Mexico's fractious and unpredictable presidential election.

The partial result was a surprising turnabout after two days of preliminary counts showed Calderon slightly ahead. The initial tally at the 131,000 polling places that began Sunday night was deemed too close to call.

On Wednesday, officials undertook the final count based on a review of polling station reports. With 94% of the polling stations tallied, Lopez Obrador led Calderon by 0.73 percentage point, or about 288,000 votes.

Representatives of Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party said the reversal was caused by the discovery of thousands of votes for their candidate that had gone uncounted in the preliminary tally.

At counting centers across Mexico, they demanded that individual ballot boxes be opened for recount. Although Calderon representatives objected, many boxes were opened and the votes tabulated

[garbageseeker]

LOL

[Uriah_lost]

Maybe we could refuse to buy their oil....I'm sure they couldn't find any other customers. /sarc off

[Miss Marple]

I am sorry I wasn't around to stick nup for you when you advanced it. I gave up on the immigration threads a few months ago.

I think it is the most plausible explanation, and one that the administration would have been foolish NOT to follow. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people posting who can't see more than one step ahead and are prone to knee-jerk reactions.

[Uriah_lost]

I suspect that a correlation could be drawn between such shortsighted thinking and the decline of chess proficiency in US schools.
Sorry 'bout that, I'm getting really sleepy!

[Miss Marple]

You may be on to something. It is one of my pet peeves that we do not teach critical thinking and long term planning in our public schools. But then, we can't even manage to teach geography and history much, either.

oBut that's a topic for another thread.

Have you been up all night following the recount?

[babble-on]

Calderon now up by 0.13

[Uriah_lost]

Yeah, pretty much....I really am a junkie. I wish I could just hook a line up to a vein and get it that way. I thought it was pretty interesting, what Mark in Mexico was saying on his blog about the whole "sealed envelope" thing. If seems an actual total recount would require some constitutional contortions for them. This is more fun from a distance but the implications for us in the US makes it pretty exciting.

[Miss Marple]

A real nail-biter, for sure.

If Calderon wins, I am not very confident of a peaceful transition. The left is ready to go to the streets, I think.

[babble-on]

There will be protests, to be sure, but I would not expect a really scary or violent situation. For one thing, its just not in the Mexican character to get violent. They're rather easygoing people in the main. For another, the voter apathy was high, 40% abstention rate means AMLO has the support of a whopping 19% of the population. Also, the vote counting has been incredibly transparent, and everyone knows why AMLO had the lead yesterday and it withered overnight, it was because AMLO's team was stalling the vote counting in the PAN dominated states.

[wildwood]

sounds like detroit.

[Uriah_lost]

BB
I'd like to stay up to see if your prediction is correct but I don't want to wake up with a keyboard imprint on my face again.

[stocksthatgoup]

Is Jimma Carter doing the vote count?

[stocksthatgoup]

"discovery of thousands of votes for their candidate" -
State of Washington

[SAJ]

Indeed it was/is.

''May you live in interesting times, and come to the attention of important people.''

Wonderfully, wickedly subtle.

[DustyMoment]

Have they found the voting machine int he leftist supporter's trunk, yet?

[DustyMoment]

Vote fixing in Mexico is a fine art.

Is that to suggest that the DEMS here could learn some things from them?

[garbageseeker]

The Dems have probably learned from them.

[Frwy]

{smile}

[Frwy]

Where would they get an idea like that?

[garbageseeker]

The Democrats