(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.

[A CA Guy]

Thanks, I think the leftists will make a lot of trouble, but legally they are through.

Let's hope the drug cartel owned Mexican military comes out and does some damage to the communists there that want to make trouble.

[StJacques]

Another news item from Leftist heaven.

A spokesman for the Lopez Obrador coalition claims that the recount so far has shown 41,832 illegal votes, a figure that is not explained but must clearly represent the total votes from all precincts in which they see "errors" of any and all kinds. And of course, this justifies their call for a total recount.

This figure does not coincide with the decisions of the on-site magistrates of the Electoral Tribunal, so no one needs to worry that the claim has any validity. But the sheer separation from reality it represents ought to give everyone an insight into the propaganda war that is about to be waged.

[rovenstinez]

In my understanding, these votes that they are picking up are the discarded void ballots which had crayon marks outside the box and earlier counts led them to be discarded, and now AMLO has convinced the IFE that the people WERE trying to vote PRD, and their pencil marks went outside the box. Like hanging chad, pregnant chad stuff.

[StJacques]

Yes rovenstinez, that is what I am reading too. In Cuernavaca the local PRD representative was very angry that the magistrate would not count more null votes for AMLO. In Veracruz evidently the magistrate was pro-PRD, so I think we can expect to see some "subjective" evaluation of null votes creating the differences.

[Shuttle Shucker]

GREAT report, Saint. So in predicting future events, I guess that in a matter of days (Monday evening, perhaps?) they'll announce Calderon as the winner, and Leftists will protest and eventually there will be clashes and subsequently the enactment of new laws against such obstructionism... But ultimately things will work out and Mexico will increasingly get its entrepreneurial act together?

[StJacques]

I'm going to go with a week from tomorrow, Saturday the 19th. The tribunal chose a Saturday to give their response to AMLO's appeal to keep the reaction at a minimum, they will probably want to spend some time during the week looking into his, ridiculous in my opinion, charge of "cybernetic manipulation" of the reporting of the votes by the IFE, they'll want to deal with other challenges from PAN -- and I expect them to reject those as "not pertaining to the outcome of the election" -- which will be a forewarning of their eventual ruling, and they will want to pronounce the actual vote count as revised by the recount. Then, when they have given everyone the clear sign that they have bent over backwards to accommodate AMLO in his appeal, they will declare Calderon the winner. And by the way, watch what happens when they deal with the "cybernetic manipulation" charge. AMLO and company have opened the door here for the tribunal to begin an examination of the Actas (the official reports of the votes in the casillas), which is the last thing AMLO and his supporters want. "Cybernetic manipulation" of the reporting of votes only deals with the Actas. I expect the tribunal to say, "yes, let's get all those reports in here and compare them with the official counting done by the IFE." Once they start that process, any consideration of counting the ballots by hand will be over and that will send Lopez Obrador and the PRD into a rabid rage.

This is going to be a rough week for AMLO. I'm going to enjoy it.

[Texan5]

Thanks so much for the update-this really is beginning to sound like a replay of Floriduh south of the border...

[Shuttle Shucker]

Hi Saint. Regarding:

>>>"yes, let's get all those reports in here and compare them with the official counting done by the IFE." Once they start that process, any consideration of counting the ballots by hand will be over and that will send Lopez Obrador and the PRD into a rabid rage.<<<

I'm not sure I understand your reasoning there. Meanwhile, the precautious side of me is concerned that some will worry that they haven't "bent over backwards" UNLESS there's a vote-by-vote recount nationwide (and Mexico lacks an electoral college system, for those here who have wondered why this is taking longer than Floriduh did). I sure would like for there to be some closure to this though, although I think we'll all miss your fine updates :-)

[StJacques]

"I'm not sure I understand your reasoning there."

Lopez Obrador and company want a complete hand recount of all individual ballots cast in the election. That has nothing to do with computers. The charge that there was "cybernetic manipulation" of the vote refers to the IFE's posting of the vote totals contained in the official vote reports, i.e. the Actas, as they were posted in the preliminary count and the official count. Therefore, by asking the Tribunal to look into this charge of "cybernetic manipulation" of the vote AMLO et al. are asking the court to compare the actual vote totals contained in the Actas (the documents themselves) with what was tallied and reported by the IFE using its own computing system software. That may turn out to be a big mistake.

[Shuttle Shucker]

Perhaps I'm still feeling under the weather, but at the risk of sounding groggily ignorant...why could that turn out to be a big mistake? If there's a vulnerability on their part, I'm eager to know about it and keep it on my radar while doing what I can off the forums... But I'm not "getting it", I confess...

[StJacques]

". . . why could that turn out to be a big mistake? . . . I'm not "getting it", I confess"

Okay, let me try this a different way.

There are two types of recounts possible in the Mexican election. One is a hand-recount of all ballots in some or all precincts, voto por voto, casilla por casilla. The second is a recount of the official document reports of the vote tallies from the casillas, i.e. the Actas. Lopez Obrador and his people claim that the Actas contain fraudulent numbers that do not represent the actual votes cast, a supposed "error" which they say can only be fixed by hand-counting the ballots. They do not in any way want to divert attention away from a hand-count of the ballots, but they have also charged the IFE with "Cybernetic Manipulation" of the vote, a charge that can only be checked by comparing votes reported by the IFE from its computer system with the actual documents used for data entry. Let me explain.

Consider how the IFE uses its computers in reporting the vote. They do it in the same way a computing system works anywhere else. On election day, for the preliminary vote count, the Actas from all the casillas arrive at the offices of the IFE in each of the 300 electoral districts throughout Mexico. Once they arrive they are then entered into the IFE database, where their authenticity can only be checked if compared against the original Acta that was used as the basis for data entry. And, through the miracle of internet connectivity, that is where the IFE's own software in its central computers in Mexico City takes over. It will take each electoral district's numbers right out of the database and prepare official reports which give "crosstabs" (tabular) data about everything involved with each casilla; how many registered voters there are, how many turned out to vote, how many votes for each candidate, how many null votes, how many did not vote, and percentage values corresponding to each of the hard numbers. And a similar process is undertaken exclusively within the IFE's home offices in Mexico City whenever the original Actas from around the country are brought in for the "official" count. Again; there is no hand-counting of ballots involved, all data entry, which is done from scratch for the official count, is executed using the figures from the "Actas."

With all of this in mind, the only way to investigate the charge of "cybernetic manipulation" of the vote is to compare what the IFE reported and when they reported it, and then to compare those numbers with the Actas. And that is the last thing the PRD wants. They must keep all attention focused upon the hand-recounts of the casillas.

Okay, how did I do this time? LOL!

[Shuttle Shucker]

Thanks for the reply. I would think the PRD might want a voto-por-voto recount PLUS an acta compilation one, as well. They seem to look for the silver lining wherever they can find it, torturing the electoral data until it will confess to nearly everything. Either way, we could have some rough times ahead in Mexico. Having you to correspond with here helps keep things in better perspective though.

[StJacques]

Mark my words, if the Tribunal does not order any more hand-recounts of the individual ballots and tells the PRD to come in and watch a recount of the Actas, which will be the equivalent of saying ok you huevones, come in here and sit down while we rub your noses in your own defeat, the PRD will go ballistic. It would be like taking AMLO on a slow walk to the guillotine.

You and I however; might just enjoy the spectacle.

[Shuttle Shucker]

You raise an interesting point, as always. I look forward to this recount's and retallying's proceeding, as do we all.