by Chris Thomas

This past July 2nd witnessed Mexico's highly anticipated presidential elections, the culmination of months of aggressive campaigning and right off the heels of political violence and turmoil in various parts of the country.   PAN (National Action Party) candidate Felipe Calderon and PRI's (Institutional Revolutionary Party) Roberto Madrazo, while butting heads themselves, headed up a smear campaign against allegedly leftist candidate PRD's (Party of the Democratic Revolution) Lopez Obrador, accusing him of aligning with Latin America's 'dangerous' leftist alliance, principly Castro and Chavez.  As the campaigning got uglier, accusations of favoritism and fraud were thrown about, implicating businesses, the politicians themselves, and even Mexico's independent electoral commission, IFE. 

To add to the mix was the 'other campaign', a nonviolent, nonelectoral initiative launched last year by the EZLN and led by subcomandante insurgente Marcos - now known as 'delegate zero.'  The initial stages the other campaign both paralleled and contested the official electoral process in what was to be a 6 month tour visiting every state in Mexico to organize the Mexican Left. 

Finally, there was a growing wave of political violence in the months preceeding the election that left a number dead and disappeared, and hundreds encarcerated, most notably: a mining strike in Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan, that turned into a violent confrontation with police leaving at least 1 dead and numerous casualties; another violent confrontation in San Salvador Atenco exploded when police attempted to run flower vendors out of the local market leaving at least 2 dead, numerous disappeared, hundreds jailed, and the deportation of a number of foreigners; and most recently, violent confrontations in Oaxaca between police forces and a teachers union, on strike and occupying the central square since May 22nd, left an indeterminate number dead, injured, jailed and disappeared. 

So as July 2nd rolled around the political climate was tense, thick with uncertainty and fear.  People waited in line for hours in one of the most anticipated elections in Mexico's recent history and the nation watched and waited for the results.  Other than the numerous reports of people getting rejected from their designated polling stations that ran out of ballots before midday, there initially seemed to be few incongruities.  The race remained close, and when the time came to announce the official results the IFE reported that with 98.5% of the votes tabulated, the results were still too close to call and that there would have to be a recount.  They asked that the political parties and their candidates refrain from proclaiming victory until the official results were released - a request that went entirely unheeded as both candidates claimed victory within 5 minutes of this announcement. 

From controversial campaigns to controversial elections, we move on into the controversial postelectoral process and the increasingly common and controversial recount (some analysts have compared this election with the US elections in 2000 and 2004).  The recount that was carried out by IFE seemed to leave Calderon with a slight margin of victory (15,000,284 ; 35.89%) over Lopez Obrador (14,756,350 ; 35.31%) but it naturally did not end there.  The 'recount' itself is misleading, as it was not a recounting of all of the votes cast but rather a review of the tally sheets from each polling station - none of the boxes containing the votes were actually opened to ensure that the votes inside matched the numbers on the tally sheets.  Citing numerous irregularities and instances of fraud, Lopez Obrador and the PRD filed an official complaint with the electoral commission, leaving the final decision in the hands of a federal electoral tribunal that has until September 6th to analyze the situation and determine the proper course of action. 
 
Was there Fraud?

In the weeks following the election both candidates have continued to claim their respective victories, and the debate has become centered around calls for a vote-by-vote recount.  Supporters of the PRD and Lopez Obrador have launched massive mobilizations, direct actions in businesses that have supported Calderon, and massive art instalations calling attention to the alleged fraud.  Calderon and his team of lawyers have defended their own victory while opposing calls for a vote-by-vote recount, claiming that there is no legal basis for such action.  In recent days, other government commissions have mirrored this attitude.  President Fox has called the elections 'a thing of the past,' and even the National Commission for Human Rights has dismissed calls for a recount as 'unnecessary.'   International observers have also claimed that there were no problems with the elections.  In spite of this, there is growing evidence that there was in fact fraud committed on a number of different levels.

Unlike the traditional ballot-stuffing techniques that have historically characterized Mexican electoral fraud, in the case of these elections it can be divided into three different phases: pre-electoral, electoral, and post-electoral.  In the first category falls the impartiality of Mexico's electoral commission, IFE, whose commissioners were elected in 2003 by the PRI and PAN without representation from Lopez Obrador's party the PRD.  This imbalance led many to criticize IFE for its partiality towards Calderon or more specifically, against Lopez Obrador.  The commission has also been criticized for overlooking the massive amounts of money poured into television spots dedicated to smearing Lopez Obrador by pro-Calderon businesses such as Coca-Cola, Jumex, Sabritas and Bimbo. 

On the day of elections, a different sort of fraud took place.  As an example of just how blatant it was, there were documented instances of camera-phones being given away to people who would take a picture of their vote, proving that they voted for the PRI, and present it upon leaving the polling station.  Aside from these blatant actions, there were instances of ballot stuffing, shortages of ballots left many unable to cast a vote at all, large numbers of nullified votes (many of which would have been cast for Lopez Obrador), and much more.  To top it off, when the IFE announced the results with 98.5% of the votes supposedly counted, they failed to include 3.3 million votes (around 7%) that had apparantly been lost, only later to be recovered. 

After the day of the elections and in the midst of a controversial recount, evidence of fraud continued.  The boxes from some of the polling stations were allegedly opened by the IFE without federal permission or oversight, and some of them, full of votes still in question, were even found to be thrown in garbage trucks and garbage dumps.  The computer based vote tallying has also been criticized.  Incongruencies have been found between the number of votes tallied in each district and the number of votes entered into the IFE database.  Also, the algorithims the database employs for its massive calculations have been criticized for skewing the margins between candidates and distorting results. Despite all of this, as well as irregularities between the actual and recorded numbers of votes, Calderon, a number of federal commissions, and even the President himself have all characterized calls for a vote-by-vote recount as 'out of hand.'

It seems unlikely that the election results will be reversed or nullified, but equally unlikely is that the discontented Mexican citizenry will take this blow sitting down.  Aside from the largely non-electoral left that is being mobilized by the EZLN's 'other campaign', hundreds of thousands of Lopez Obrador's supporters have taken the streets, and continued to demonstrate in favor of fair elections.  Nor does this latest electoral controversy stand alone, as Mexicans still remember clearly the 1988 electoral fraud, where computer failures and ballot burnings gave the presidency to PRIista Salinas de Gortari over the popular PRD candidate, Cuauhetemoc Cardenas. Election day has come and gone, but the people who understand that democracy doesn't just happen one day a year continue to march in the streets, to demonstrate, and to demand that their voice be heard.