Evidence of Election Fraud Grows in México

By Chuck Collins and Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on August 2, 2006, Printed on August 2, 2006

http://www.alternet.org/story/39763/

A month after more than 41 million Mexicans went to the polls to elect their
next president, the country is still awaiting a result. A preliminary count
of polling station tally sheets put conservative Felipe Calderón of the
National Action Party (PAN) ahead with a slight lead over left-populist
Andres Manuel López Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD). Both
candidates have claimed victory, with López Obrador and his supporters
holding vigils and protests across the country and calling for a
vote-by-vote recount.

That hasn't kept a consensus from emerging in the commercial media that
Calderón won by a small margin in a squeaky-clean election. In a hyperbolic
editorial on July 30 -- one that bordered on the ridiculous -- the
Washington Post accused López Obrador, known as AMLO to his supporters, of
taking "a lesson from Joseph Stalin" and launching an "anti-democracy
campaign" by demanding a manual recount and urging his supporters to take to
the streets in peaceful protests. Calling the vote "a success story and a
model for other nations," the editors concluded that it's "difficult to
overstate the irresponsibility of Mr. López Obrador's actions."

Days after the election, the New York Times irresponsibly declared candidate
Calderón the winner, even though no victor had been declared under Mexican
law, and just this week, in an article about López Obrador's protests, the
Times reported that López Obrador had "escalated his campaign to undo
official results."

But there are no "official" results and probably won't be until after Sept.
1. Under Mexican law, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) is charged with
running the elections and counting the vote. But only the country's Election
Tribunal, known by its Mexican nickname as the "TRIFE," has the power to
declare a victor (See here for background on the TRIFE). They have until
Sept. 6 to rule on the election.

It appears that the U.S. media has become so enamored with the construct of
the "anti-democratic" left in Latin America -- the ubiquitous "fiery
populists" (a term that has described everyone from the centrist Lula da
Silva to Hugo Chávez) -- that they are incapable of fulfilling their basic
mandate to inform their readers when it comes to the political landscape
south of the border. It's nothing short of journalistic malpractice.

But back in the real world, a growing body of credible evidence from
mainstream Mexican journalists, independent election observers and respected
scholars indicates that an attempt was made to deliver the presidency to
Calderón. It includes a pattern of irregularities at the polls, interference
by the ruling party and some very suspicious statistical patterns in the
"official" results.

The TRIFE is now sifting through 900 pages of formal complaints lodged by
López Obrador. Their ruling on those challenges will indicate how well
México's electoral process holds up in a closely fought and highly polarized
race.

Growing evidence of irregularities and fraud

México has a history of the party in power's using its clout to tip the
election in its favor, and strict laws prohibiting ruling party interference
were enacted in the 1990s. Election law prevented Vicente Fox, the outgoing
PAN president, from making public statements of a partisan or political
nature. But he overstepped this line many times in the 2006 campaign,
including dozens of speeches reinforcing candidate Felipe Calderón's basic
message that López Obrador was a "danger to México." In a well-publicized
speech, candidate López Obrador responded, "With all respect, Mr. President,
shut up. You sound like a chattering bird." Fox continued with these
speeches until election authorities and public commentators warned Fox he
was violating election laws.

The Fox administration also ran public service announcements touting
government programs and services and promoting the vote. PAN saturated the
television airwaves with "swift-boat" style attack ads against López
Obrador, comparing him to Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and calling him a "danger
to México." Election authorities eventually ordered these commercials off
the air on the grounds that they were untrue and maligned the candidate's
character, but critics believe they moved too slowly.

Under Mexican law, ruling party interference is a serious charge and grounds
for annulling an election. In the last ten years, the same Electoral
Tribunal judges that are reviewing AMLO's complaints annulled governors'
races in Tabasco and Colima, based on ruling party interference. The
Institutional Revolution Party (PRI), which ruled México for seven decades
before the system was reformed in the 1990s, made vote buying and voter
coercion into a high art form, and there is strong evidence that they were
up to their old tricks in the 2006 election. With PRI governors in 17 of
México's 31 states, election observers documented a significant number of
examples of voters being offered money or receiving food or building
materials in exchange for their PRI vote. In a country where half the
citizens live in poverty and rely on different forms of government
assistance, voters are often told that their public assistance is dependent
on voting for the party in power. There are examples of PAN using similar
practices, especially a well-documented case of funds diverted from a San
Luis Potosi building program into PAN electoral races.

The Mexican electoral system has come a long way in two decades in
implementing anti-fraud systems. But there are still several ways that
results can be tampered with on election day. López Obrador's campaign and
hundreds of independent election observers documented several hundred cases
of "old fashioned" election-day fraud in making their case for a recount.

Here's how the system was supposed to work. On July 2, Mexicans voted at
over 130,000 different polling stations, casting separate ballots for
president, senator and federal deputy. Each political party was encouraged
to have registered poll watchers at every polling station to observe the
voting process and count at the end of the day. As international and Mexican
election observers noted, however, problems emerged when there weren't
enough independent and party observers to go around. In regions where one
party was dominant, this created opportunities for vote shaving, ballot
stuffing, lost ballots and other forms of fraud.

The PRD's strongest case for a recount comes from the fact that ballots in
almost one-third of the country were not counted in the presence of
independent observers. One analysis of IFE results found that there were
2,366 polling places where only a PAN observer was present. In these
districts, Calderón beat López Obrador by a whopping 71-21 margin.

Other elements of PRD's legal challenge include documentation of several
ballot boxes found in dumps in the PRD stronghold of México City. They also
point to evidence such as the nonpartisan Civic Alliance's report
documenting 17 polling sites in PAN-dominated Nuevo León, Michoacan and
Querétaro, where the number of votes cast vastly exceeded the number of
registered voters at a site.

Reports by international and domestic election observers affiliated with the
Civic Alliance and Global Exchange stop short of claiming fraud in the
elections. They laud the dedication of most poll workers they monitored and
the preparations for the vote in most of the polling places, as well as the
orderly and peaceful process overall. But the cumulative evidence is damning
in such a closely contested race.

In the weeks after the election, PRD observers again sounded the alarm as
sealed ballot packets were being illegally opened at IFE district offices in
several PAN-dominated regions. PRD officials accused IFE officials of
possibly tampering with ballots or attempting to cover up fraud in the event
of a recount. The TRIFE ordered these offices to stop opening vote packets.

While the López Obrador campaign has not made major charges of "cyber
fraud," there is an emerging controversy over the IFE's role in reporting
who was ahead in the vote count. For the 2006 election, the IFE had
developed a sophisticated system to provide preliminary results called the
PREP. Relying on results being phoned in from a sample of precincts, the IFE
could compile a credible picture of the vote. If the PREP showed one
candidate with a clear majority, the system would have allowed Mexicans to
go to sleep on election night knowing who their next president would be. But
because of the razor close results, the PREP proved to be an inadequate
measure.

Now research is emerging to suggest that the PREP results were cooked to
create the appearance of a Calderón victory. Physicist Jorge López at the
University of Texas, El Paso, conducted a statistical analysis of the PREP
results and found that, as the results came in, the differential between the
candidates' totals remained almost constant. One would expect that, as
results from each party's geographic strongholds were counted, the gap
between their totals would rise and would fall. In such a tight election,
one would even expect the lead to change back and forth as the count
progressed. None of that happened. The results of a third candidate, Roberto
Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), fluctuated as
expected.

He also noted that there was very little deviation between the actual
results as they came in and the average results; in a normal, natural
distribution, one would expect significant differences between the two (it
should look something like a squashed bell-shaped curve). Dr. López
concluded the pattern was "a clear indication that the data was manufactured
by an algorithm and does not stand a chance at passing as data originated at
the actual voting."

Luis Mochan, a physicist at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, did
similar work. He noted that the PREP data was posted after the first 10,000
reports had been processed, and looked at whether those first 10,000 reports
were consistent with the statistical trends for the rest of the day. When he
plotted the data backwards, Calderón's vote total originated at zero, as is
normal, but López Obrador began the day 126,000 votes in the hole.

Mochan and López both point out that the Calderón began the day building a
large percentage lead -- seven points -- that decreased steadily throughout
the day. The large early lead would have been handy from a psychological and
political perspective, allowing Calderón to claim that he led all day long,
but the results had to end in a close result given that polls conducted a
week before the tally showed a statistical dead heat.

Mochan also notes gross discrepancies in the number of votes processed late
in the evening: "At the end of the plot, we find intervals with more than
1,200 votes per [voting] booth. I understand that no booth was to receive
more than 750 votes. Even more worrisome, some data points indicate a
negative number of votes per booth."

Mochan notes that these statistical anomalies aren't definitive proof of
anything. But economist James Galbraith, reviewing Mochan's data, speculated
about a likely scenario that would fit the discrepancies seen that night:

Felipe Calderón started the night with an advantage in total votes, a gift
from the authorities.

As the count progressed, this advantage was maintained by misreporting of
the actual results. This enabled Calderón to claim that he had led through
the entire process -- an argument greatly repeated but spurious in any case
because it is only the final count that matters.

Toward the end of the count, further adjustments were made to support the
appearance of a victory by Calderón.

Critics suggest that the IFE may have aggressively pushed to swiftly declare
Calderón a victor, obviating the need for a poll-by-poll vote recount.

The U.S. media was also confused on the Wednesday after the vote when the
IFE ordered all 300 district offices to review the tally sheets. It was
widely reported as a "recount," when in fact very few ballots were actually
counted. In some cases, such as when a tally sheet was illegible, the sealed
ballot packets where opened and recounted. Almost every time that occurred,
observers encountered significant errors in the vote count. In the state of
México, one tally sheet recorded 88 votes for López Obrador when the recount
of ballots found 188 votes. Whether it was human error or intentional vote
shaving, in a tight election race, these examples gain heightened
significance.

None of these reports in and of themselves constitute a smoking gun. But the
questions they raise need to be answered. There is far more evidence
pointing to fraud in the Mexican elections in 2006 than was made publicly
available about Ukraine's contested vote in 2004. Comparing the media and
political establishment's reactions to the two reveals the transparent
dishonesty in backing Calderón's claim of victory; in 2004 many of the same
voices that are now calling López Obrador "undemocratic" were screaming that
the Ukrainian tally had to be annulled and only a new election would assure
democracy in the former Soviet satellite. In both instances, the candidate
who declared victory was friendly towards a powerful neighboring state; in
2004 that state was Russia, and two years later it's the United States.
Forget about threatening México's fragile democratic institutions -- that
makes all the difference to the editorial boards of the New York Times and
the Washington Post.

According to the Mexican daily La Journada, over two million supporters of
López Obrador gathered in México City on Sunday, July 30, the largest public
demonstration in México's history. Millions of voices chanted "vote by vote,
poll by poll," calling on the Electoral Tribunal to order a recount. A poll
released this week found that Mexicans, by a 20-point margin (48-28), want a
vote-by-vote count. López Obrador has said he will call off protests when
the Tribunal agrees to a recount and will honor its final decision.

As for the charge in the U.S. media that López Obrador is undermining
democracy and the rule of law by calling on his supporters to protest, we
believe that the rights of peaceful assembly and free speech are important
democratic tenets. Public protests have played a historic part in México's
three decade-long transition to democracy.

President and PAN leader Vicente Fox called for direct action when he
believed he was victimized by electoral fraud in his race for the
governorship of Guanajuato in 1991. Fox called on thousands of supporters to
take to the streets and block highways, and the results were eventually
overturned. Asked before the 2000 presidential election if he would do the
same thing if he suspected fraud, he didn't hesitate to say "we will be very
alert to any irregularities, and we will submit the appropriate legal
accusations that are necessary. If there is any instability [as a result of
those accusations], it will be due to whatever they have done fraudulently
to avoid recognizing our victory."

While Calderón has opposed a ballot-by-ballot recount, even some of his
staunchest supporters have argued that the process would assure Mexicans'
faith in their electoral authorities and strengthen the country's young
democracy. In a race where over 64 percent of Mexicans voted against him,
Calderón, if he should prove victorious, will need all the legitimacy he can
muster.

As México awaits the rulings of the electoral tribunal, tensions are high.
The campaign -- often dirty -- and the close results have polarized the
country. Given the context, the U.S. media's water-carrying for Calderón's
campaign is anything but helpful. The fact that there have been no
"official" results is not open to dispute, and until AMLO's allegations have
been investigated, there is no way that anyone can say who will come out
ahead.

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Chuck Collins is the co-author of "Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer
on Economic Inequality and Insecurity" (New Press). He is a senior scholar
at the Institute for Policy Studies and lives in Oaxaca, México. Joshua
Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/39763/
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