Mexico's Election Fraud is Coming Undone

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Nine days after the fact, neither the IFE, nor President Vicente Fox, nor his National Action Party (PAN), nor their candidate Felipe Calderón, nor the Commercial Media at their service, have been able to reassert control over the juggernaut of facts, audio and video evidence, and public outrage that today tramples their anti-democratic gambit. The Fraud of 2006, and those who attempted it, are drowning under an authentically democratic tide.
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After eight days of insisting that there must not be a recount, that it would be “illegal” to have one, that the Trife judges will never allow it, the PAN filed a motion with the Trife yesterday calling for recounts in six states won by López Obrador: Mexico City, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Guerrero, State of Mexico and Tabasco. It has now adopted the very same legal recourse that, in previous days, the PAN viciously attacked. The legal maneuver reveals the PAN’s lack of faith in its own claims that it won the election and also demonstrates that the PAN now believes a recount is, contrary to its public claims, going to occur.
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Also on Monday, candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador released a video in which an election official in Salamanca, Guanajuato...is caught stuffing many ballots into a ballot box. Captured on video, he sports a blue-and-white shirt (PAN’s campaign and logo colors) and has quite the guilty look on his face as he stuffs one ballot after another into the box. In the Salamanca district, IFE reported that Calderón received 93,062 votes to 23,278 for Obrador. The video – so newsworthy that even pro-PAN TV Azteca broadcast it yesterday – has further fueled the public anger....

Video, audio and photographic evidence of election fraud surges daily. It is the dominant news story in Mexico. Obrador released a similar video of election officials in PAN-controlled Querétaro changing the vote tallies to create more votes for its candidate. The PAN does not deny the facts. It simply claims that those cases amounted to normal, allowed, functions by election officials. The public temper rises with every such justification.

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I feel sorry for the guy in the photo in the Narco News article (the photo has been all over the Mexican media, of course). He's effectively being tried in public for election fraud, but actually no-one is quite saying that. As with the other half million or so election officials, he was drafted at random because his name starts with a particular letter of the alphabet.

The video was taken during the ballot count. In Mexican general elections, there are three simultaneous elections -- president, senate, and house of deputies -- and voters fill out three ballots. There are also three ballot boxes. Shockingly, some voters put one or more of their ballots in the wrong box. By Mexican law, during the count, if a ballot is found in the wrong box, it must then be placed in the correct box so that it can later be counted. That's what the election official claims that he was doing when that video was taken.

I've watched the video -- it was available all over the place, and probably still is -- but it is of very poor quality (I think it was taken with a mobile phone). You can look at the still yourself: honestly, could you say that he has a "guilty look"? And can one be tried in public for that, even if it were the case? At the very least, he should get a fair trial.

AMLO says he doesn't want the election annulled, and I believe him. However, a recount of the ballots is not going to help resolve questions like whether ballot-stuffing (or robbery) occurred. So if the election tribunal finds that there is reasonable evidence that there was systematic and generalized ballot-stuffing, then it is illogical for them to order a recount. They would have to annul the election.

The problem with that is that it is quite likely that PRI would opt to not run in a second election, arguing that "for the good of the country" there should be a clear choice between the front-runners. They would then throw their support to Calderón. If they could convince a reasonable majority of their voters to go that way, AMLO would be crushed.

Meanwhile, the Other Campaign -- headed by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos -- having previously urged people to not vote, are now claiming that "over a million votes" for the PRD have gone uncounted. This is a perfectly coherent strategy for Marcos, since -- unlike the actual participants in the election -- he has consistently rejected the electoral system as a mechanism for social revolution. So it makes sense for him to take the opportunity to delegitimize the electoral authority and the rest of the electoral apparatus.

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A full week after the most viciously contested presidential election in its modern history, a Florida-sized fraud looms over the Mexican landscape and the nation has been divided almost exactly in half along political, economic, geographical and racial lines.
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At a raucous July 8th rally that put a half million supporters in Mexico City's vast Zocalo plaza, the political heart of the nation, Lopez Obrador called upon his people to demand a complete vote by vote recount of the results. Speaking from a flatbed truck set up in front of the National Palace, the official seat of the Mexican government, the fiery, former Mexico City mayor characterized President Vicente Fox as "a traitor to democracy" and for the first time at a public meeting uttered the word "fraud," accusing the IFE of rigging the election to favor his opponent.

Indeed, fraud was the central motif of the mammoth meeting. Large photos of IFE president Luis Carlos Ugalde slugged "Wanted for Electoral Fraud" were slapped up on central city walls and tens of thousands of protestors waved home-made signs dissing the IFE official with such colorful epithets as "No To Your Fucking Fraud!"
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This Wednesday (June 12th), the left leader is calling upon supporters in all 300 electoral districts across Mexico to initiate a national "exodus" for democracy that will converge upon the capital on Sunday, July 16th for a mega-march that may well turn out to be the largest political demonstration in the nation's history. Indeed, AMLO already set that mark in April 2005 when 1.2 million citizens surged through Mexico City to protest Fox's efforts to bar the leftist from the ballot; the president dropped his vendetta three days after the march.
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As tens of thousands of AMLO's supporters -- "the people the color of the earth" Subcomandante Marcos names them -- march across the Mexican landscape on their way up to the capital to demand electoral justice, invoking scenes of the great movement of "los de abajo" (those from down below) during Mexico's monumental 1910-1919 revolution, the country holds it breath. Source

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Given the clear election irregularities, [Lopez Obrador has] demanded the ballot boxes be opened and all votes be recounted manually. He has every right to ask for that and more with what already is known about the fraud committed against him.

The preliminary vote totals were manipulated to show PAN candidate Felipe Calderon would be the winner, initially 3 million votes were never counted and only in hindsight 2.5 million of them were added to the totals, 900,000 supposedly void, blank and annulled ballots were declared null, discarded and never included in the official totals, 700,000 additional votes disappeared from missing precincts, thousands of voters were denied their franchise in strong Obrador precincts and much more.

In addition, it was learned that Felipe Calderon's brother-in-law Diego Hildebrando Zavala wrote the vote-counting software, and it's already been hacked. This new discovery is especially disturbing as whoever controls the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) computer systems can manipulate the vote process, control which votes get counted, which ones don't, and what the final vote tally will be.

The opportunity and temptation for fraud was therefore in the hands of the declared winner's close family member and ally with every reason to believe he'd take full advantage. Why wouldn't he and the ruling party as well given the history of Mexican elections and the underhanded and hardball tactics the country's entrenched power interests are known to use. They'd never be willing to give up what they've always had an iron grip on and won't if they can get away with their scheme.

But the way to stop them is with a full, vote-by-vote independently supervised manual recount and do it before any cast, counted or discared votes are manipulated or destroyed. That's the only antidote for computer fraud as well as to be able to salvage and include in the total as many of the known uncounted and valid discarded votes as possible.

It all sounds like Florida, 2000 deja vu all over again, but we know how that one turned out. Stephen Lendman

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Originally quoted by M. Spector:
In addition, it was learned that Felipe Calderon's brother-in-law Diego Hildebrando Zavala wrote the vote-counting software, and it's already been hacked. This new discovery is especially disturbing as whoever controls the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) computer systems can manipulate the vote process, control which votes get counted, which ones don't, and what the final vote tally will be.

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Sorry, M. Spector, but that's just paranoid rumour.

The votes are posted here, where you (and everyone in Mexico) can see the results at every polling station. You (and they) can add them up themselves. The results can be compared against the counts posted at every polling booth (in Mexico, they're posted publicly outside the polling booth when the count ends.)

There is no evidence that the IFE computers have been "hacked". The so-called evidence is remarkably similar to the supposed evidence of fraud in the Venezuelan elections -- but with the difference that votes in Mexico are counted by hand.

The supposed irregularities in the preliminary tally are (a) irrelevant and (b) without foundation.

Certainly, there is an argument to manually recount the votes. It's possible that the count was manipulated at some polling stations; even more likely that mistakes were made at some polling stations. Recounts rarely change election results by more than a fraction of a percent, but that's the difference in this election so it would be sensible to have some assurance of that.

The PRD is within their rights to ask for it; they've asked for it; a lot of Mexicans think it would be a good idea to do it. So we'll see how the election tribunal rules. (You will be able to watch their deliberations through internet video streaming if you want to; it will also be broadcast on Mexican cable. Thrilling viewing, no doubt )

I agree that the election fell rather short of standards for fair elections: it was a campaign of rumours and intimidation and outright lies. The Mexican business elite and the television stations conspired against the PRD. (In short, it was rather like a US election.) However, the reason the PRD lost (if they lost, and I'm sadly coming to the conclusion that they did) was lack of organization on the ground. They were unable to get observers to almost 20% of the polling stations -- although they'd accredited observers at 97.5% -- and that implies that they weren't able to pull their vote in much of the country. Ask any NDP organizer about losing an election by two votes per polling station -- it's a classic anecdote.

Clearly, the PRD is now trying to delegitimize Calderón. Unfortunately, the way they're trying to do it delegitimizes the entire Mexican electoral apparatus. That's easy to do, because everyone knows that Latinos are incapable of running fair elections.

It seems that you feel that Obrador and the left have to pass a much more stringent litmus test than you demand of the right, which you acknowledge as playing dirty. This imbalance plays right into the hands of the corporate media which continues to frame issues they way they see fit, thus rendering the democratic process almost meaningless.

Also, in previous response to one of my posts, it seemed you had a hard time accepting that the racial divide is structuring many of these struggles, as indigenous Latin America grows increasingly assertive. Thus John Ross's article echoes my point that I cast as a contrast between as the Spanish capital of Lima (where Garcia won) and the Incan capital of Cuzco (where Humala won). Mexico reveals the same pattern of polarization.

And sure Marcos is riding this to further erode faith in the electoral system (which you think is a bad thing), but I don't think he would suggest the mechanism of fraud if he didn't know what he was talking about.

You never responded to my previous post, I don't think. What I said was not that the racial divide is not a factor, but that your analysis of Perú as being simply Spanish Lima vs. Inca Cuzco is overly simplistic, because it leaves out the entire north coast (who feel, possibly incorrectly, that they won something in the last election.) Anyway, only a small part of Lima is "Spanish". There are lots of poor people in Lima -- poor indigenous people if you like -- just as there are in Mexico City.

As for whether Marcos would only cry "fraud" if he believed there was fraud, I simply don't agree. I think he will use whatever tools he finds useful, and why not? He's under no obligation to support the democratic process as currently constructed. I happen not to agree with his strategy.

AMLO, however, is being a hypocrite in my opinion. But that's quite a different issue. In any event, he's not a radical socialist; he's centre-left and probably not much different politically from Alan García, or Jack Layton. Which is fine. And which is why he gains support from the same sort of districts that García does. I would have voted for him. But I don't think he's worth ripping an electoral system apart for.

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Mexico reveals the same pattern of polarization.

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Stephen Harper has called Mexican presidential candidate Felipe Calderón to congratulate him on his victory. Harper joins George Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in recognizing the reported election results, which have been the focus of a major controversy in Mexico. According to Mexican law, however, Calderón cannot be declared the winner until allegations of election fraud are investigated.

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Gordillo, popularly known as "La Maestra" (teacher), was expelled from the PRI. Gordillo is the head of Mexico's teachers' union, SNTE, and was the secretary-general of PRI from 2002 until September 2005, when she was forced to resign because of her outright feud with the party's presidential candidate, Roberto Madrazo, and her participation in the new "liberal" party, Nueva Alianza.

I tried to find a translation of this article from El Universal, but I couldn't, so here's mine. I think I got the right tone of all the Mexican insults.

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Elba Esther Gordillo affirmed that she "was honoured" by being expelled from the party "by this clique of nobodies that brought the PRI to discredit."

"It's been a pleasure to have served Mexico; Roberto Madrazo will never be President of the Republic," concluded Gordillo Morales, who yesterday was expelled from the PRI by the Party Justice Commission.

In a message read in the Centre of Contemporary Mexican Culture, the teachers' union director noted that the members of the commission who approved her expulsion all ran for public office on July 2, and all were defeated.

"Political justice," she concluded.

She said that the group headed by Roberto Madrazo Pintado "didn't have the guts" to expel her earlier.

She also noted that the prestige of many PRI governments wasn't enough to overcome the discredit of the PRI leadership and presidential candidate.

She added that the madracistas [Madrazo supporters] had ruined the party they had wanted to maintain "as a sellable franchise".

She called the PRI directorship "illegal", the national executive committee a "slagheap" and Madrazo's campaign coordinators "corrupt".

Afterwards, she clarified that she would not be joining any political party, including Nueva Alianza.

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So was Quebec's Union Nationale.

Some good pictures here (from El Universal, I don't know how long they'll stay up.)

So the next move is up to the Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF, but usually called Trife which was the previous electoral tribunal), which has not yet received all of the documents substantiating the impugnations (they should have them tomorrow).

Apparently, it is possible for the TEPJF to annul the election, in which case an interim president would have to be chosen by both houses of parliament, and a new election would be called between 14 and 18 months later.

AMLO has said that he would not approve of such a ruling, since all he is asking for is that the votes be recounted. However, many of the complaints lodged with the TEPJF allege misconduct prior to election day, and cannot logically be resolved with a recount.

The pre-electoral misconduct is actually pretty clearly documented -- it includes a massive third-party advertising campaign by the chambers of commerce (as in Canada, third party advertising is illegal in Mexico) and explicit support for Calderón by the Fox administration. Given the closeness of the election, it could easily be argued that the result was influenced by those illegal acts -- in fact, it is almost certain that it was.

The annulment of the election would definitely be a black eye for IFE, who could have acted much more strongly against the violations when they occured. By contrast, a recount of the vote -- if it is consistent with the published results -- could help IFE with its troubled image.

In my opinion, that would be incorrect: the vote was counted by about a million randomly-selected Mexicans; although the IFE council was in charge of the logistics, they probably didn't have any real way of influencing the work. But they were directly responsible for ignoring or underestimating the violations of electoral law prior to the election.

In rhat sense, the accuracy of the count (or not, as the case may be) reflects the adequacy of the Mexican election law, which specifies the procedures, whereas the adequacy of the judgements about dirty electoral practices reflects the actual political independence of the IFE council.

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Originally posted by Heavy Sharper:
The PAN is an ultramontanist party.

So was Quebec's Union Nationale.

Ultramontanists are far-right theocratic freaks who stal elections.

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Originally posted by kropotkin1951:
when Mulroney "won" the free trade election with less than 40% of the popular vote.

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Mexico's top electoral court on Saturday rejected a ballot-by-ballot recount in the disputed presidential election, angering supporters of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who have kept the nation in turmoil for weeks.

In Mexico's central plaza, thousands of protesters watched the court session on a huge screen, chanting "Vote by vote!" and drowning out the judges' statements. Representatives of Lopez Obrador walked out of the session in protest.

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Mexico's Electoral Tribunal Orders Partial Recount to Begin on Wednesday

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In a Solomonic decision, the seven justices of Mexico’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal (known as the Trife) cut the baby of democracy in half.

In doing so, they added more uncertainty and drama to an already tense crisis. The court’s decision to allow a recount in only half of Mexico’s 300 electoral districts could still result in an historic reversal of official tallies that gave a razor-thin advantage to National Action Party (PAN) candidate Felipe Calderón (who the Federal Elections Commission, know as IFE, claims won by .58 percent or 240,000 votes), making former Mexico City governor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) the comeback kid of this year’s cloudy election process.

Alternately, it could narrow the margin between the two candidates to an extent that makes evident the need for a full recount.

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[ 05 August 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

Who should be declared as president elect?

45% - Felipe Calderón
26% - Andrés Manuel López Obrador
20% - Election should be annulled

A plurality believe either that Obrador won, or that the election should be annulled.

To wit:

Who should be declared as president elect?

Felipe Calderón
45%

Andrés Manuel López Obrador
26%

Election should be annulled
20%

Let me just guess that most of those who think the election should be annulled do not believe Calderon won.

[ 15 August 2006: Message edited by: jeff house ]