Washington Post: Mexico Watches as Votes Are Tallied
Post
Mexico Watches as Votes Are Tallied, Minute by Minute, Election Rumors Fly, Manuel Roig-Franzia, Gabriela Granados Martinez, Washington Post, Thursday, July 6, 2006
MEXICO CITY, July 5 -- It took all night, but Felipe Calderón is back on top in Mexico's see-saw of a presidential race.
Calderón, a free-trade booster from outgoing President Vicente Fox's conservative National Action Party, leads the populist Andres Manuel López Obrador by 100th of a percentage point after 97.7 percent of polling places have been counted.
Mexicans choose between joining a resurgent left-wing in Latin America or sticking to pro-business policies and a close alliance with the United States.
Calderón is ahead with 35.6 percent to Lopez Obrador's 35.59 percent. Calderón slipped ahead this morning at 4 a.m. in Mexico City, 5 a.m. eastern standard time, after 20 hours of trailing López Obrador.
Mexican television networks stayed on the air with news programming throughout the night, tracking the count in detail. Calderón on had lead by .64 percent after a preliminary count, which was followed by the ongoing official count. The remaining votes to be counted are mostly from National Action Party, or PAN, strongholds in northern Mexico and Calderón's supporters are gathering outside Calderón's headquarters in anticipation of his victory.
Their celebration could be short-lived. Mexico's electoral results must be certified by a special elections court, which has powers similar to those of the U.S. Supreme Court and has until Sept. 6 to decide the election.
López Obrador is expected to challenge the results, alleging widespread fraud. He has said "the stability of the country" depends on the count and has threatened to mobilize hundreds of thousands of supporters in street protests.
The painstaking count -- a dull procedure in a normal election year -- has riveted much of Mexico and added to the tension building over the outcome.
Newspaper Web sites kept a running count of the tabulations Wednesday, and the information zinged across the capital via text messages and phone calls. During a reception at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City, a woman shouldered into a group chatting near the refreshments table and breathlessly announced, "López Obrador is ahead by two points." Moments later, across the room, a man confided to a friend, "Calderón's ahead now."
Throughout Wednesday, election supervisors in 300 vote-collection centers were poring over tally sheets from each polling place alongside representatives of the three major political parties: Calderón's National Action Party, or PAN; López Obrador's Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD; and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, whose candidate, Roberto Madrazo, has conceded.
Luis Carlos Ugalde, head of the Federal Electoral Institute, which is tabulating the results, said Wednesday that he was unsure how long the count would take. The process is complicated by a law that allows for the contents of the vote packets to be opened only if the tally sheets, or the packages, appear to have been tampered with or damaged. Such packets are then sliced open and a vote-by-vote count is conducted.
This has enraged López Obrador and his supporters, who have alleged that 51,900 polling places had "grave inconsistencies" and that 18,600 ended up with more votes than the number of ballots given to the polling place. They want a vote-by-vote count of every packet. But Ugalde said Wednesday that opening all the packets would amount to a violation of law that would annul the results of not only the presidential race but also thousands of other races, including contests for the legislature and a host of governorships.
The count, which a special elections court has until Sept. 6 to certify or reject, will continue through the night, Ugalde said. He has told his employees that they must find a replacement to fill their seats if they want to go the bathroom.
Calderón strategist Arturo Sarukhan said in an interview, "I'm still betting that the tally sheets will confirm that Felipe won."
Outside the Federal Electoral Institute, dozens of demonstrators waved López Obrador signs and chanted: "This is fraud. He won."
MEXICO CITY, July 5 -- It took all night, but Felipe Calderón is back on top in Mexico's see-saw of a presidential race.
Calderón, a free-trade booster from outgoing President Vicente Fox's conservative National Action Party, leads the populist Andres Manuel López Obrador by 100th of a percentage point after 97.7 percent of polling places have been counted.
Mexicans choose between joining a resurgent left-wing in Latin America or sticking to pro-business policies and a close alliance with the United States.
Calderón is ahead with 35.6 percent to Lopez Obrador's 35.59 percent. Calderón slipped ahead this morning at 4 a.m. in Mexico City, 5 a.m. eastern standard time, after 20 hours of trailing López Obrador.
Mexican television networks stayed on the air with news programming throughout the night, tracking the count in detail. Calderón on had lead by .64 percent after a preliminary count, which was followed by the ongoing official count. The remaining votes to be counted are mostly from National Action Party, or PAN, strongholds in northern Mexico and Calderón's supporters are gathering outside Calderón's headquarters in anticipation of his victory.
Their celebration could be short-lived. Mexico's electoral results must be certified by a special elections court, which has powers similar to those of the U.S. Supreme Court and has until Sept. 6 to decide the election.
López Obrador is expected to challenge the results, alleging widespread fraud. He has said "the stability of the country" depends on the count and has threatened to mobilize hundreds of thousands of supporters in street protests.
The painstaking count -- a dull procedure in a normal election year -- has riveted much of Mexico and added to the tension building over the outcome.
Newspaper Web sites kept a running count of the tabulations Wednesday, and the information zinged across the capital via text messages and phone calls. During a reception at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City, a woman shouldered into a group chatting near the refreshments table and breathlessly announced, "López Obrador is ahead by two points." Moments later, across the room, a man confided to a friend, "Calderón's ahead now."
Throughout Wednesday, election supervisors in 300 vote-collection centers were poring over tally sheets from each polling place alongside representatives of the three major political parties: Calderón's National Action Party, or PAN; López Obrador's Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD; and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, whose candidate, Roberto Madrazo, has conceded.
Luis Carlos Ugalde, head of the Federal Electoral Institute, which is tabulating the results, said Wednesday that he was unsure how long the count would take. The process is complicated by a law that allows for the contents of the vote packets to be opened only if the tally sheets, or the packages, appear to have been tampered with or damaged. Such packets are then sliced open and a vote-by-vote count is conducted.
This has enraged López Obrador and his supporters, who have alleged that 51,900 polling places had "grave inconsistencies" and that 18,600 ended up with more votes than the number of ballots given to the polling place. They want a vote-by-vote count of every packet. But Ugalde said Wednesday that opening all the packets would amount to a violation of law that would annul the results of not only the presidential race but also thousands of other races, including contests for the legislature and a host of governorships.
The count, which a special elections court has until Sept. 6 to certify or reject, will continue through the night, Ugalde said. He has told his employees that they must find a replacement to fill their seats if they want to go the bathroom.
Calderón strategist Arturo Sarukhan said in an interview, "I'm still betting that the tally sheets will confirm that Felipe won."
Outside the Federal Electoral Institute, dozens of demonstrators waved López Obrador signs and chanted: "This is fraud. He won."
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