Election recount begins at more than half of Mexico polls

latimes.com: MEXICO CITY -- Mexico is recounting votes cast at more than half its polling places during Sunday's presidential election, the electoral body said Wednesday, as reports of vote-buying marred the apparent win of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Ballots from more than 54% of polling places will be recounted within 72 hours, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) said. The figure marks a huge increase over the 9% of ballots that were recounted in the long and contentious aftermath of the disputed 2006 election.

The recount began early Wednesday as part of the IFE's normal procedure of validating results gathered from the institute's 300 electoral districts. By law, ballots are recounted when a polling place shows irregularities, such as more votes cast than there are registered voters, a complete sweep by a single candidate or party, or a 1-percentage-point or smaller margin between first and second place.

Separately, the PRI is facing growing accusations that campaigns gave potential voters supermarket debit cards in exchange for their votes, among other allegations. Read more.

Photos: Marches against electoral fraud and Pena Nieto

The day after the election, and the day after that, the #Iam132 student movement organized peaceful demonstrations in Mexico City protesting electoral fraud and Enrique Pena Nieto.

Photos taken by Rafael Stedile.

Election “full” of irregularities, concludes #YoSoy132

El Proceso: Americas Program Original Translation
See Spanish Original.
Mexico City – Based in an encampment at the Revolution Monument and with a “Peace Room,” or center of operations, in a residence in the south of the city, the members of the movement #Iam132 reported that the electoral day was “full” of irregularities and a "wave of violence."

Calling for 3,000 observers and committees to register witness reports and by means of social networks, the students documented around 500 reports of irregularities, they said through different press releases and a press conference at the Revolution Monument.

“Up until now there are more than 500 reports of irregularities, among them some are serious offenses: it has been registered that police have robbed ballot boxes and that there have been shootings. Also, we received an extreme case in which poll workers were kidnapped. In Pueblo Nuevo, Chiapas, armed groups entered the voting stations and there were two deaths. In San Miguel Totolopan, Guerrero, we found out that they filled ballot boxes. In San Juan Chamula, Chiapas, armed groups with submachine guns fired at voters. In Ensenada, Baja California, a voting employee disappeared with 2500 ballots,” said Sandino Bucio, and announced that all the documentation that was gathered will be given to Fepade [the special federal investigative unit for electoral crime] to make their case.

Of the reports received throughout the country, they said that 46% related to vote buying; 30% voting irregularities; 19% related to propaganda. In spite of the close of the election, these isolated cases can affect many.

The states with the most “controversies,” according to reports, were Mexico State, Veracruz, Tabasco and Chiapas.

Denied the Right to Vote in Mexico’s Presidential Election

My husband and I moved away from our voting district in Mexico State in large part due to increasing violence. In May 2011, I suffered a botched kidnapping attempt in broad daylight. In October 2011, we were enjoying a drink in a quiet, well-lit bar when municipal police allegedly working for the La Familia criminal organization burst in, locked down the bar, and held us all at gunpoint while they pressured the owner to pay his quota to La Familia. He was the last bar owner in town who refused to pay criminals for the right to operate his business. After about a half-hour of lockdown, we left the bar unscathed. Bar patrons in the next town over, however, were less fortunate. Three days after our ordeal, gunmen allegedly working for La Familia opened fire in a bar that refused to pay its quota, shooting five patrons, including two women.

By March 2012, bodies hanging from bridges or executed and dumped in mass graves or in front of public events were becoming relatively commonplace in the farming community where we lived. So we moved.

After settling in to our new home in a new state, my husband and I debated whether or not to vote in the presidential elections. We’d never voted, nor had any member of our family for that matter. Our family was disillusioned with the electoral process, and the “leftist” candidate, Andres Manuel López Obrador, had promised United States Vice-President Joe Biden that he would continue the drug war if he were elected president. Our family had always preferred grassroots organizing to participation in the electoral process.

But this election was different. My husband and I spent two years in Mexico State under the rule of Enrique Peña Nieto, and we watched as his security policies sent our quiet, close-knit town into a tailspin. Our friends and family were tortured in Atenco in 2006 during a violent police operation ordered by Peña Nieto. No government officials have been punished for the unthinkable things they did to our family, even though we still have to live with the emotional and physical consequences of the torture. On the contrary, Peña Nieto was rewarded for his deeds when his party named him their presidential candidate.

The #YoSoy132 student movement against Peña Nieto’s candidacy convinced us that voting against the man who had done us so much harm was both noble and necessary. We saw ourselves reflected in that movement. The students didn’t belong to a political party. They weren’t faithful followers of a candidate that they felt would single-handedly change Mexico for the better. They simply knew that Enrique Peña Nieto could not become the president of Mexico, and we knew that, too. So we decided to vote for Andres Manuel López Obrador.

Mexican law prohibits any changes to voter registration in the six months prior to an election, which meant that my husband was unable to change his voting district to our new home in the state of Oaxaca. On Election Day, he left early to vote at one of the Special Voting Booths set up for citizens who are voting outside of their districts.

When he arrived at the polling station, the line for those waiting to vote stretched down four city blocks. Because he had other obligations that day, he decided to return in the afternoon. He had until 6pm to vote. When he returned hours later, the line was much shorter, but then he found out why: earlier in the day, election officials handed out numbers to those waiting in line: 750 numbers, one for each ballot the Special Voting Booth received for citizens voting outside of their districts. The rest of those waiting in line were told to go home or find another Special Voting Booth--this voting booth had no more ballots.

My husband visited another three polling stations that were equipped with Special Voting Booths, and none had enough ballots for the citizens who wanted to vote. Nancy Davies, a Mexican citizen and founding member of the Oaxaca Study Action Group, reports that by 3:30 pm, signs were up in Oaxaca’s town square stating that none of the area’s six Special Voting Booths had ballots, news that she says nearly provoked a riot downtown.

As the 6 pm deadline closed in, those who did receive numbers were becoming anxious. One woman at the back of the line said that she had been waiting in line since 11am. An elderly gentleman who was just casting his vote at 6:30 said that he took his place in line at 8. He was number 326. As they waited all day in the burning sun then pouring rain, they watched people with numbers give up and go home.

Voters began to complain about the long waits to the election officials in charge of their polling stations. “There’s so few of us here. We should have voted already! How is it that you’re taking so long to let us vote?” complained one man to an election official, who told him to file a formal complaint with the Federal Elections Institute (IFE). A man who was unable to cast his vote commented that he believed election officials were intentionally delaying the voting process so that potential voters would give up and go home.

My husband and I were shocked and dismayed that he was unable to vote because the government had provided the Special Voting Booths with so few ballots. Those who are forced to vote in the Special Voting Booths instead of their designated polling stations are those who have been harmed the most by the federal government’s policies. They are Mexico’s internal refugees, displaced by the violence and insecurity that the current president unleashed when he deployed the military in the war on drugs. They are the unemployed who were forced to travel to look for work because there was none at home, thanks to the president’s disastrous economic policies. They know better than anyone else what is wrong with the federal government’s policies because they have lived it in flesh and blood, yet on July 1 they were denied their constitutional right to vote for the next president. 

Kristin Bricker, in Oaxaca.

What does #Iam132 mean for Mexican youth?

El Pais: Americas Program Original Translation by Anna Moses
See Spanish Original.
The aspirations of young Mexicans are very different, and equally real, like the slogan of a student protest in Mexico City- "Be informed, vote, and turn off the stupid television"- and painted on a wall in a provincial town: "I would prefer to die young and rich than old and broken like my father."

The first phrase is a slogan of the "I am #132" movement, the first far-reaching political youth movement of the century, the modern, urban and technological face of the new generation. A critical wave that began in the social networks in May, the movement took to the streets of the capital with a tide of young people that denounced the supposed alliance between the big communication networks and the PRI candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, front runner for the elections on July 1st.

The movement threw the PRI campaign into confusion and damaged the PRI’s voting expectations, however, not bringing it down from its first place in the polls, and had such an influence that three of the four candidates- with the exception of Peña Nieto- participated in a student-organized debate.

The other phrase is on a wall in Culiacán, capital of Sinaloa province. The quote is from the writer, Humberto Padgett, winner of the Ortage and Gasset 2012 prize for the book "The Lost Boys" which was based on interviews with young prisoners. "When I was asking them what they wanted to be, they said “El Chapo” Guzmán, the boss of the Sinaloa cartel, the one who kills most, who f---- most, the worst b------, and they were asking me if it was worth the effort of studying to end up selling tacos in the street, like their older brothers."

Mexico's elections peaceful so far

Mexico's presidential elections have so far shown no signs of violence or major disturbances. It's raining here in Mexico City but many people were at the polls early in what appears to be a good turnout. Problems have been reported with voting at special polls (where voters who are out of their home districts can vote) in a repetition of glitches with those polls in past elections.


We sent out the following announcement a few hours ago. It has some interesting live links. I will be commenting on Telemundo tonight at eight, from the Zocalo. California residents can watch the program and we'll get a link to the rest of you. Preliminary results should be out around then.

SPECIAL MEXICO ELECTIONS COVERAGE from the CIP Americas Program

Today more than 79 million Mexicans are voting for a new president. The Americas Program is here, writing for you on the process before, during and after citizens cast their votes. Our team is reporting in from Mexico City and various states to keep you up-to-the minute on events and what it means for the future of the country.

While armchair analysts in Washington and Mexico City expound on the return of the PRI and the evolution of the electoral system, we've been on-the-ground, looking at the deeper story and what it means for Mexico's fledgling democracy.

Americas Program director, Laura Carlsen, has analyzed the past five Mexican presidential elections for the program and international media. Here is what we´re seeing:

The good news:

* There has been very little violence so far. Today's voting is proceeding  peacefully. A morning drive showed polling places where long lines of voters waited patiently to deposit their votes. We have not seen the assassination of candidates that we saw in the mid-term elections. However, it isn't quite a clean slate either. Local newspapers report the assassination of a PRD electoral representative in Guanajuato and minor skirmishes in other parts of the country.

* More than three million citizens are registered as poll watchers. This includes those registered by the Electoral Inistitute (IFE) and by the parties. This is an important guard against the type of anomolies reported in 2006.

* Young people are participating and claiming the process. The "I am 132" movement has mobilized youth to get involved and defend the vote. This movement has a non-partisan, but anti-Peña Nieto orientation and has mobilized thousands of students.

Warning signs:

* Documentation has emerged on the sale of favorable coverage of the PRI candidate. Youth especially have challenged the role of the huge media conglomerates as a factor that creates an uneven playing field for candidates.

* Media have reported extensively on vote- buying, coercion and fraud.

* The many legal reforms in the electoral system are incomplete and are not being applied to the letter. Evidence exists that the PRI has exceeded  campaign spending limits and the above illegal practices continue in many parts of the country.

CONTACT:

Laura Carlsen, Director Americas Program. e-mail: info@cipamericas.org

Tel: (521) 553-551-9993

FOR MORE INFORMATION FROM THE AMERICAS PROGRAM:

Web page: www.cipamericas.org

Americas MexicoBlog

Twitter:  @cipamericas

Facebook: CIP Americas Program

Photo: YoSoy132 organized candle-lit march on night before election

Mexico's Battle for Modernity

Huffington Post: On July 1st, Mexicans will head to the urns in what is only the second presidential election following 70 years of single-party rule by the PRI. On the economic front, the stakes have never been higher. For three decades, Mexico has languished in a middle-income trap of tepid growth and low productivity, notwithstanding its post-NAFTA transformation into an export powerhouse. Furthermore, its institutional development has been stunted by a political class that, despite being freed from the shackles of single-party rule, remains woefully inefficient, prone to conflict rather than compromise, and corrupt. Although much has been said of the country's recent economic revival -- it is most likely going to outpace regional poster-boy Brazil in terms of GDP growth for the second year in a row. There are reasons why the medium- and long-term outlook will be gloomier in the absence of a fundamental redesign of the way Mexico does its politics. For it is bad politics, not bad economics, that are mostly to blame for why the country has failed to reach its full potential. Read more. 

A Left-Wing Comeback in Mexico's Presidential Elections?

The Nation: In an unexpected turn of events, the eruption of a new youth movement has transformed the prospects for Mexico’s July 1 presidential elections. A month ago, the candidate from the old authoritarian Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI), Enrique Peña Nieto, seemed poised to win easily by a two-digit margin and bring back the ways of the past. But after weeks of student protests against the imposition of Peña Nieto by the dominant television duopoly, as well as a series of corruption scandals that implicate the PRI, leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador has come back within striking distance.

Mexico’s emerging “#YoSoy132” student movement shares much with similar mobilizations throughout the world over the past year and a half, but with a distinctive electoral twist. As in Egypt, Spain and the United States, social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have exploded with activity and facilitated the organization of youth marches and protests. Nevertheless, unlike the Arab Spring, the Mexican protests are not directed against the sitting president but against a presidential candidate. And unlike the Spanish uprisings, electoral politics are seen to be at the center instead of at the margins of the movement. Also, in contrast to the Occupy movement and Mexico’s long tradition of raucous protests, this time around the youth have been particularly careful not to disrupt traffic or take control of public spaces. Read more.

Online and on the streets, Mexico youth protests grow as election looms

CNN: Mexico City -- They sport purple hair and piercings, plaid shirts and plastic aviator glasses. A guy with dreadlocks totes a bongo drum.

Five weeks ago, they were scrambling to finish homework assignments and studying for exams at Mexico City's Iberoamerican University. Before then, many of them had never met.

Now, the students huddle in a tight circle at a weekend protest, stack their hands in the middle and belt out a school cheer: Wolves, howling, on the path to truth. Ow-ooo. Ow-ooo. Ow-ooo.

They have become high-profile protagonists in a swelling youth movement that has drawn attention from the nation's presidential candidates and added fuel to the political frenzy leading up to Sunday's vote. Read more.

Mexican media scandal: secretive Televisa unit promoted PRI candidate

The Guardian: Broadcaster commissioned videos rubbishing rivals of candidate who is now favourite to win presidential race on Sunday, documents seen by the Guardian reveal.

A secretive unit inside Mexico's predominant television network set up and funded a campaign for Enrique Peña Nieto, who is the favourite to win Sunday's presidential election, according to people familiar with the operation and documents seen by the Guardian.

The new revelations of bias within Televisa, the world's biggest Spanish-language broadcaster, challenge the company's claim to be politically impartial as well as Peña Nieto's insistence that he never had a special relationship with Televisa.

The unit – known as "team Handcock", in what sources say was a Televisa codename for the politician and his allies – commissioned videos promoting the candidate and his PRI party and rubbishing the party's rivals in 2009. The documents suggest the team distributed the videos to thousands of email addresses, and pushed them on Facebook and YouTube, where some of them can still be seen. Read more.

Mexico election candidates rally thousands in final days of race

latimes.com: MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's presidential campaign entered the home stretch Monday, with less than a week left until voters cast ballots in a race that could return the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to power. The PRI ruled virtually unchallenged and often with a heavy hand for 71 years before losing the presidency in 2000.

The top three candidates crisscrossed the country over the weekend rallying thousands of supporters at huge events in the final days of official campaigning.

The PRI's poll-leading candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, on Sunday held a closing rally at the cavernous Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. Leftist coalition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, runner-up in the 2006 election, closed his campaign in the capitals of western states Nayarit and Jalisco.

Josefina Vazquez Mota of the incumbent National Action Party, or PAN, rallied supporters in the port city of Coatzacoalcos, in the state of Veracruz. Read more.

Mexico ready to vote, watchful for fraud

Washington Post: The worst practices were curbed by incremental electoral reforms starting in the 1970s, and in 2000 the right-leaning National Action Party (PAN) ended PRI rule with Vicente Fox’s win. The PAN now competes across the country, with the smaller, leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) also fielding candidates in many districts.

Today, the parties act as mutual watchdogs, appealing to the electoral institute with complaints or allegations of rivals’ wrongdoing. Although public perceptions of the IFE suffered after the 2006 election crisis, today, about 75 percent of Mexicans have a “positive” or “normal” level of confidence in its integrity, pollster Roy Campos said.

“Unfortunately, voters’ confidence is based on candidates’ fraud claims,” Campos said, suggesting that IFE’s reputation can sink quickly again if controversy returns. Read more.

More than 600 organizations will take to the streets if the popular vote is ignored

La Jornada: Americas Program Original Translation by Bonnie Ho

See Spanish Original.

Elections 2012: - Letter sent to authorities calls for no fraudulent practices. Warns that this may be the last chance by voting to make changes.

Fernando Camacho Servín.
More than 600 civil organizations and citizens, on their own accord, warned yesterday in a declaration that if in the presidential elections on the first of July there are traces of fraud, they will act to prevent any attempt to violate the people's will, as it may be the last opportunity to make changes through the vote.

The letter – signed by important figures such as the bishop of Saltillo, Raúl Vera, Pablo González Casanova, Javier Sicilia, Miguel Concha Malo, Rosario Ibarra de Piedra and Enrique Semo, among others – is directed to authorities from the three levels of government and indicates that the country faces a state of emergency and national disaster due to the imposition of a parasitic and stagnant economy.

With the backing of religious, migrant, farming, and ecological organizations and trade unions, and in defense of human rights, the document referred to the situation that has worsened by the war the federal government unleashed, not to combat organized crime, but to protect business monopolies' interests, which has provoked a humanitarian catastrophe.

Mexico ready to vote, watchful for fraud

Washington Post: MEXICO CITY — Mexican democracy has come a long way from the days when the ruling party would give out washing machines for votes and rip up ballots with the wrong box checked off.

Today, electoral regulators preside over an elaborate system of safeguards that have made stealing the presidency at the ballot box impossible, political analysts say. But they warn that the country’s July 1 election remains vulnerable to subtler forms of tampering and the shadowy influences of organized crime, along with some new twists on the old dirty tricks.

The worst electoral abuses in Mexico during the 20th century were typically the work of its long-ruling political dynasty, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). With polls showing the PRI cruising toward a big victory this year, election officials here have been making near-daily public assurances that the vote will be squeaky clean. Read more.

Mexico election diary: #YoSoy132 at a crossroads

The Economist: MEXICO’S presidential candidates have had two official televised debates, one in Mayand another earlier this month. On June 19th there was a third, unofficial one, hosted by a student movement called #YoSoy132. The pressure group, which was born in May after a disastrous visit by Enrique Peña Nieto, the leading candidate, to a Mexico City university, got the candidates together for two hours of discussion ahead of the election, which is now little more than a week away.

It was a decent debate. The questions put by students were good and specific; candidates had to answer simply yes or no, before outlining their proposals in more detail, which cut down on the off-topic speeches that politicians often like to dive into. It was transmitted on the internet, complete with severe technical problems due to heavy traffic (or perhaps, Twitter rumours ran, to sabotage). Read more.

Mexico's Youth Make Voices Heard Ahead Of Vote

NPR: Mexicans go to the polls July 1 to choose their next president, and polls show that voters seem inclined to embrace the past. The center-left Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled the country for more than seven decades before being ousted 12 years ago, holds a solid lead.

But Mexico's young are making their voices heard: Some fear a return of authoritarian rule; others simply want jobs.

Making Noise
For the past few weeks, two things have been happening quite a lot in the Mexican capital: rain and protests. Hitting the streets are students from some of Mexico's most elite universities. Read more.

Peña loses a “valuable” opportunity: #YoSoy132

El Milenio: Americas Program Original Translation

One of the moderators of the debate, Carlos Brito, regrets that Peña Nieto is not attending and insists that he is losing an opportunity to participate in a “historic” event.

Mexico City – Carlos Brito, a member of the social movement #YoSoy132 and one of the three moderators of the debate that will take place today, regrets that the PRI-PVEM candidate has rejected the invitation to participate in the debate he describes as “historic”.

Peña loses “a very valuable opportunity to participate in the first debate to take place outside of the institutions,” said Brito in an interview with Sergio Sarmiento y Lupita Juárez for the Radio Red network. “If I were a candidate, I would be very excited,” he added.

Brito repeated that during the debate today at 20:00 hours, there will be three rounds and one moderator for each one. The first will be with the university delegates with nine questions on nine subjects, the second will be free time, and the last will end with questions from Internet users.

On the theme of the video and audio published yesterday by Manuel Cosío, presumed former member of #YoSoy132, Brito emphasized that Cosío and Saúl Alvídrez – also involved in the controversy – have been outside the structure “for a long time,” and he rejected that the debate would be influenced in any way.

“We aren’t surprised, but we have now proven this feeling of unity and strength,” Brito replied upon being asked about this case.

#YoSoy132 separate from Cosío and Alvídrez

In a press release published on their official page, the movement assures that: “In light of the declarations of Manuel Cosío and Saúl Alvídrez, published on social networks and other media outlets, the #YoSoy132 movement denies that they speak in the name of the movement.”

Furthermore, the statement adds that those who seek to “carry out propaganda or find financing through political parties” are not part of the movement.

It condemns the increased attacks against them, “with the purpose of discrediting them,” for their “strength” that has reached a national and international level.

“In order to destroy us one would have to stop the opinion of a nation. The attacks against #YoSoy132 are irrefutable evidence of the movement's impact on awakening Mexican political culture. The Mexican youth have designed a revolution to take place, to interpret and to transmit.”

See Spanish Original.

Translation by Bonnie Ho, Americas Program