(Mexico's Presidential Election) Recount sees minor tally errors on Day 1

mexiconews.com.mx ^ | August 10, 2006 | El Universal wire services

[StJacques]

Election authorities on Wednesday began a court ordered partial recount of the July 2 presidential vote that revealed minor errors during the first day´s ballot reviews.

Officials from the Federal Electoral Institute supervised by 192 federal judges began reviewing ballots from 9 percent of more than 130,000 polling places.

The recount is part of the process for the court to settle challenges brought by second-place candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who claims fraud.

The court-ordered recount will probably narrow Calderón´s margin of victory, said Chappell Lawson, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Such an outcome could encourage López Obrador´s supporters to step up their protests and call for a full recount, a move that would weaken Calderón´s government in its opening months, Lawson said.

"Calderón´s lead will probably narrow in this partial recount because the polling places were chosen by López Obrador´s coalition," Lawson said in a telephone interview from Cambridge, Massachusetts. "If the vote narrows, he has a much stronger case for demanding a total recount."

A third of the polling stations where votes will be scrutinized are in the states of Jalisco and Baja California, which supported Calderón. An average 300 votes were cast at each polling place.

SLOW START

The electoral court´s seven justices unanimously rejected López Obrador´s demand for a full recount of ballots on Aug. 5 and ordered instead a partial recount.

They said the Democratic Revolution Party candidate´s lawyers failed to impugn all polling places. The court has to resolve all challenges to the election by Aug. 31 and declare a winner by Sept. 6.

Officials reviewing ballots at a district office in the northern city of Monterrey took more than an hour to count the first of 100 ballot boxes, said Raúl González, a PRD representative helping monitor the tally.

"It´s going very slowly," said González. He predicted the count would take four days. At a district office in Guadalupe, Nuevo León, outside of Monterrey, party officials disagreed on what recount results showed.

"There are normal errors both for them and for us," Francisco Javier Bustillos a National Action Party representative, said in an interview at the district office.

Adolfo Llubere, 35, a representative for the PRD, said one ballot box contained 625 votes when registries showed it should have held only 618, clear evidence of fraud.

Calderón, a 43-year-old former energy secretary under President Vicente Fox who pledged to keep inflation in check and lure investment, beat López Obrador by 243,934 votes out of 40.9 million valid votes cast, a margin of 0.6 percentage point, according to the Federal Election Institute´s uncertified vote count.

[StJacques]

I can give a brief overview of results from reports of the progress of the recount in several different areas of Mexico from articles in Spanish at the web sites of the Mexico City newspapers El Universal and La Crónica de Hoy

Most of the recount is showing only very minor changes in vote totals. The big news for Calderon and the PAN is that the recount in Mexico City's Electoral District 15, around which Lopez Obrador presented his Recurso Madre (the "Mother of All Appeals") to the Electoral Tribunal as showing the most damaging evidence of fraud, has now been completed. The end result was a net gain of 11 votes for Lopez Obrador and 11 votes for Felipe Calderon. It was a tie! Recounts are also proceeding elsewhere, it was reported that AMLO picked up 11 votes in Nuevo Leon (Monterey area), there was some tension in Guanajuato (approx. 100 miles NNW of Mexico City) between PRD and PAN observers of the recount that almost led to blows, but the difficulties were worked out evidently and it is reported that the recount is proceeding in an "orderly" fashion, no report of any major alterations. Similar reports are coming in from most everywhere else, which has led the PRD to charge "conspiracy" for the fact that many of the electoral packets were already opened. In many instances it is known that this opening was done legally however, since Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute had to retrieve basic documentation as required by the Electoral Tribunal. But the Federal Electoral Institute has said that it may be that some of the packets were damaged in the process of handling them.

Thus far, the only instance where there appears to be any kind of gain for Lopez Obrador, and it is still very small, in in the recount in Yucatan, where a local PRD spokesman says they are picking up an average of 5 votes per packet, largely from "null votes" that are being reclassified, and he predicts they will gain about 1,200 total when the process is completed. But that is not an official report, just the statement of a PRD official.

In addition to all of this the demonstrators in Mexico City continue to keep the central business district shut down to traffic, they are staging demonstrations with only a few hundred demonstrators showing up at various sites, all of which is being treated as a nuisance by the authorities. The one thing federal officials have done of note is to reinforce security at the Mexico City airport in anticipation of the possible arrival of demonstrators at that site.

[StJacques]

A Mex-Elex ping for you all.

[conservative in nyc]

Thanks for the ping. It sounds like the recount won't change the results much, but ObraGore will still continue his protests and nonsense.

[A CA Guy]

I'm sure they will get to the mayhem within the week.

[StJacques]

The fact that the press in Mexico is giving a lot of coverage to the unchanging nature of the results in those precincts Lopez Obrador and his legal team identified to the Electoral Tribunal as presenting the most outstanding instances of fraud is very bad for AMLO and company. If they can't show fraud in these precincts, then the legal logic is that they won't be able to show them anywhere else.

[StJacques]

The "mayhem" is what I still worry about. The Left in Mexico right now has come to be dominated by individuals who have developed very close ties to Cuban, Venezuelan, and Bolivian interests -- agents from all three countries were expelled from Mexico during the campaign for violating Mexican electoral law by assisting in AMLO's campaign -- and I don't expect the Latin American Left to sit quietly while they lose a close one.

But it is very clear that AMLO's protest supporter numbers are declining significantly. That is the major brake upon any decision they might entertain to turn to violence. And their persistent efforts to goad the federal authorities into overreacting have thus far failed. Evidently Fox and his administration recognize that AMLO and the PRD are becoming their own worst enemies and they are simply letting them torpedo their own cause.

[Prodn2000]

Remember Washington State?

[GeronL]

Adolfo Llubere, 35, a representative for the PRD, said one ballot box contained 625 votes when registries showed it should have held only 618, clear evidence of fraud.

but from which side?

[zbigreddogz]

This is nothing but grandstanding. It's one thing to overturn a .000001% victory, a'la Florida, it's quite another to overturn a .6% victory. Especially seeming as how Mexico's voting system is actually far more secure and accurate then ours.

[StJacques]

"but from which side?"

Since this comes from a PRD spokesman, he is obviously alleging 7 additional votes for Calderon, but the problem he has in explaining that is "which seven ballots are the additional ones?" The PAN spokesman could be on equal ground to allege that they were all cast for AMLO. And that does not prove they were fraudulently cast either, since it could be possible that they were not recorded correctly on the register.

[StJacques]

"Remember Washington State?"

We all do Prodn2000, but it ain't gonna happen this time. This may be hard for people to believe, but Mexico's voting system is actually more secure than ours, even according to the liberal L.A. Times.

[StJacques]

"Especially seeming as how Mexico's voting system is actually far more secure and accurate then ours."

Obviously you have been paying attention zbigreddogz. See my #11 above.

[Shuttle Shucker]

Here's a scary precedent:

http://www.el-universal.com.mx/notas/367974.html

The electoral tribunal has just accepted some PRD protests regarding the state of Puebla....20 days AFTER the statutory deadline for having submitted them!

[rovenstinez]

RAINS are just NOT cooperating with these people. If AMLO is sleeping in a tent at the Zocalo, he might come up with a good case of pneumonia. http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/368026.html

[Shuttle Shucker]

I see Venezuela's Chavez is finally appearing electorally vulnerable....

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/world/4106645.html

[StJacques]

"Here's a scary precedent . . ."

Go back and read that article carefully Shuttle Shucker. It's not as scary as it looks at first glance, because the judges of the tribunal will handle this matter themselves.

I'm translating paragraphs 2 and 3 here:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

. . . They are treating appeals of inconformity within nine [Electoral] District Councils in the state of Puebla, but these were brought forward with more than 20 days of delay [after the election], outside the term established by law.

In agreement with that which Article 10 of the means of challenges law establishes, said appeals would be declared "inadmissible" for being brought forth inopportunely late. . . .

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The article then goes on to say that they will be "turned over to the magistrates" (turno a magistrados) and gives details on which magistrates will handle them.

I believe this means that the magistrates will take them into their possession and may perhaps give them a quick once-over to see if there is anything that was missed, but there has been no decision to recount them as of this moment. I think what is going on here is that the magistrates are waiting on the results of the rest of the recounts to see if any possible changes in the outcome are even remotely suggested to make up their minds what to do about the electoral districts in Puebla. But remember that they held the coalition to the letter of the law in their response to the nationwide recount, I suspect they are going to do the same here, but they're not dumb and they are probably giving themselves cover here by taking the packets into evidence. After all, it would look bad if they told the coalition "we're not even going to listen."

[livius]

"null votes" that are being reclassified,

A favorite leftist technique.

[StJacques]

"If AMLO is sleeping in a tent at the Zocalo, he might come up with a good case of pneumonia."

Solamente podemos esperar.

[StJacques]

"A favorite leftist technique."

Based on what I've been reading about the recount numbers so far, I'm not worried. But I'm really waiting for Guanajuato, which is the one place I had some worries that fraud may have been committed in Calderon's favor, to come in and show its impact.

And hey, check out Shuttle Shucker's link in his post #15 above. Muy interesante.

[Shuttle Shucker]

I hope you're right. The article's neither thorough nor well-written. The initial lines say that the disputes will be resolved, and yet later on the article says they're sort of void due to the statute of limitations. The way I had read the latter part is that the law SAYS they're void, but the tribunal will deal with them nonetheless. I hope it will be like you say, but if not then this is one scary precedent.