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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | August 2006 
Mexico's Vote Recount: Day One
 Lisa J. Adams - Associated Press
| | An electoral official holds a packet of ballots during a partial recount of the July 2 elections in Mexico City, Mexico, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006. Mexican electoral officials launched an intensely scrutinized partial recount of ballots in the contested presidential election as leftist demonstrators alleging vote fraud blocked bank headquarters in the capital and pledged to spread their protests nationwide. (AP/Gregory Bull) |
Electoral officials fanned out across the country Wednesday to begin a partial recount in Mexico's tight presidential election, while leftists alleging vote fraud blocked bank headquarters in the capital and vowed to take their disruptive protests nationwide.
Guarded by soldiers and monitored by electoral judges and representatives of all of Mexico's five political parties, authorities started sifting through ballots cast at 11,839 polling booths, about 9 percent of the 130,000 booths used during the July 2 election.
The count must finish by Sunday. The Federal Electoral Tribunal will review the results and can then declare a president-elect by Sept. 6, annul the election or order a greater recount.
The initial results gave Felipe Calderon, the pro-business candidate of conservative President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, a lead of 240,000 votes, or less than 1 percent, over leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, former mayor of Mexico City.
"We don't accept this recount," Lopez Obrador told thousands of his supporters in Mexico City's central plaza on Wednesday night.
His campaign team said they had found that vote tally sheets were different from actual votes in about 60 percent of the ballot boxes examined, and that 18 percent had been opened after the elections.
However, National Action officials told reporters that their observers had witnessed no major irregularities in any partial recount and said a recount in western Jalisco state gave Calderon about 2,000 additional votes.
The partial count could change the results, but it was considered unlikely to tip the balance in favor of Lopez Obrador, whose supporters have been disrupting life in the capital for more than a week to press their charge he was robbed of an election victory by fraud.
Calderon welcomed the partial recount, saying it would cement his advantage.
But Lopez Obrador dismissed the action as a farce and said his loyalists would continue their demonstrations unless authorities ordered a vote-by-vote recount of all 41 million ballots.
Across Mexico, electoral officials sliced open seals placed over doorways and pulled tape off doorknobs to reopen storage rooms holding the paper ballots cast July 2.
Officials then began opening sealed polling packages to sift through ballots and read the tallies from polling stations. They were looking for mathematical errors, evidence of fraud, ballots that should have been thrown out, or ballots that were mistakenly annulled.
At the 12th federal electoral district in Mexico City, Judge Julio Humberto Hernandez, party representatives and six soldiers watched as officials spent nearly 90 minutes counting ballots from the first of 28 packages they were ordered to review.
The end result: One less vote for Calderon and one more for Lopez Obrador, a total of 11 votes more all together than what workers reported immediately after the election, and five null votes instead of the initially reported seven.
"This is proof that they did things badly," said Agustin Guerrero, a representative of Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party who witnessed the recount. He said such discrepancies would be important for "continuing to argue that they open up all of the election packages."
Ricardo Monreal, who is leading Lopez Obrador's legal challenges before the Federal Electoral Tribunal, said party officials contend about 40 percent of ballot boxes "were altered ... illegally adjusted" after the election.
Monreal held out hope that irregularities found in the recount could serve to order a broader examination of "a minimum of 72,000 polling places," while Democratic Revolution Party spokesman Gerardo Fernandez continued to insist only a full recount would be acceptable.
The seven judges of the Federal Electoral Tribunal voted unanimously Saturday to deny a full review, saying it would violate election laws that allow recounts only when there is evidence of irregularities or fraud. They instead ordered the partial recount at polling places where they deemed problems were evident.
The decision prompted Lopez Obrador to call on his supporters to escalate protests from the tent camps they set up along Mexico City's main Reforma Avenue and at the central Zocalo plaza July 30, snarling traffic and commerce and trying the patience of many of the capital area's 23 million people.
On Wednesday, dozens of Lopez Obrador supporters blocked the entrance to the main offices of three foreign-owned banks in Mexico City, chanting "Vote by Vote!" and "Long live democracy!"
The demonstrations came a day after protesters briefly took over toll booths on highways leading into the capital, allowing motorists free passage.
Also Wednesday, National Action Party General-Secretary Cesar Nava said his party had knowledge of an attempt by some members of Lopez Obrador's party to enter National Action offices uninvited on Tuesday.
PRD spokesman Gerardo Fernandez vehemently denied the allegations. |
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