Mexican Election Fraud

Despite evidence of systematic fraud throughout the Mexican voting system, the electoral commission decided to uphold the results of the election that gave the conservative Calderon a 233,000-vote advantage over left-center Obrador out of 41.6 million cast. The electoral commission refused to perform a full recount because it is illegal to open the sealed ballot boxes, though I have to question the purpose of keeping the boxes if you can't look at them after the initial count. Regardless, they recounted 9% of the ballots, and after the annulment of hundreds of thousands of votes for errors, Calderon had lost 7,000 votes. Despite the concern that the discovery of such an enormous number of errors would prompt in the average observer (which it didn't seem to among the commission), there are more systematic problems than vote counts.

Vincente Fox, the current President of Mexico, and Lopez Obrador have a poor history. Fox tried to oust Obrador while he was mayor of Mexico City, and succeeded for a while until massive street demonstrations forced Fox to accept Obrador's position. This obviously does not bode well for partiality in the election, and Fox put his full support behind Calderon, helping to make personal attacks against Obrador (in one he claimed that Obrador would become the puppet of Hugo Chavez if elected). Not only is this bad for fair elections, its also technically illegal in Mexican elections, but the commission couldn't be bothered to say anymore than that it "probably" had a strong impact on the elections.

Though the electoral commission is technically independent of the government, they still are government employees in the pay of the current administration. For them to sit here and act as if they are entirely neutral in such affairs is absurd. The electoral system relies so heavily on the "independence" of this commission and refuses to administer any reasonable objective precautions, like, for instance, conducting a full recount.

What it boils down to in the end is just another example of conservatives in power subtly bending the rules to stay in power, keeping out the poor and declaring that they are defending the system against "radicals" and "disrupters." It is good to see that the people of Mexico will not be fooled by such behavior and are preparing to continue to oppose the government and the electoral commission's decision. Sadly, all anti-governmental activities always end the same way; Already in Oaxaca the government is preparing to "restore order" using the military, and such action against the much larger protests in Mexico City will certainly occur soon.