Choose your news about Mexico's election

whichever candidate you're rooting for, there's a story just for you...

ap...

Conservative candidate Felipe Calderon was winning an official vote count by a razor-thin margin Thursday.

nyt...

With tallies taken from about 93 percent of the polling places, the electoral authorities reported that the count had tilted toward the leftist candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had 36 percent of the vote, while the conservative candidate, Felipe Calderón, had 35 percent.

wapo...

Calderón, a free-trade booster from outgoing President Vicente Fox's conservative National Action Party, led the populist Andres Manuel López Obrador by 100th of a percentage point after 97.7 percent of polling places have been counted Thursday morning.

there's also concern that, precisely as illustrated above, the u.s. media is muddying the already muddied waters by trying to call the results prematurely without letting the mandated process take its course...

The process of counting ballots begins today, Wednesday, at the local district offices. The winner, according to IFE officials, could be announced before Sunday. But the process could require more time, depending on the number of ballots counted by hand.

Regional officials will first review tally sheets, computer results and polling data from over 130,000 polling areas. If there are formal complaints about specific areas, they will open sealed ballot packets and do hand counts. The good news is Mexico's next president won't take office until Dec. 1, and the IFE is not required to legally certify the election until Sept. 6. Everyone is counseling calm.

The U.S. media, however, have seized upon the Calderon 1 percent lead number and begun coronation proceedings. They've implied that it's all over, except "firebrand" Lopez Obrador and his street mobs won't concede. This is highly irresponsible.

The U.S. media should butt out of the Mexican election until it can get its facts straight on the actual process and the historical context of Mexico's evolving democracy.

i just hope and pray that there are enough observers keeping an eye on things and that the ife (mexico's federal electoral institute) has enough integrity to keep things clean... even then, the odds that some rioting and violence will break out are high...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet