Thursday, July 06, 2006

Mexican Election

It appears that Calderon has hung on for the victory, which is excellent news.

"With 99.59 percent of the vote counted, Felipe Calderon would win even if all the remaining votes went to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party. He had 35.83 percent of the vote, compared with 35.36 percent for Lopez Obrador.
Less than 200,000 votes, out of more than 41 million cast, separated the two."

Obrador is still protesting and asking for a manual recount, but Mexican law is pretty clear:

"Lopez Obrador demanded that electoral officials carry out a manual ballot-by-ballot count, instead of just tallying vote totals as they have been doing.
But Luis Carlos Ugalde, president of the Federal Electoral Institute, said that was not possible.
"Mexican law is very clear on when a ballot box can be opened: only when there are problems with the vote tallies, when the tally sheet has obviously been changed, or when the box has been tampered with," Ugalde said."

Calderon has offered Obrador a cabinet seat in an effort to create a coaliton government, but it isn't likely he would accept. Obrador may threaten street demonstrations in the capital, and is promising to bring a protest to the Mexcian election tribunal.

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