Mexican officials find lost votes
MEXICO CITY – The margin between the two leading candidates for president narrowed suddenly Tuesday after election authorities revealed that some 2.5 million votes had been missing from earlier counts. The announcement meant the race between leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and conservative Felipe Calderon was still too close to call.
The uncounted votes heightened the sense of disarray that has plagued the election since Mexico’s polls closed Sunday evening.
An initial count of the ballots gave a slim but apparently insurmountable lead to Calderon. On Monday evening, Calderon was leading Lopez Obrador by 402,708 votes, with 98.45 percent of polling stations “processed,” according to official reports.
But election authorities acknowledged Tuesday that the preliminary count did not include vote totals from more than 11,000 stations where “irregularities” were noted in official paperwork. Those stations were listed as “processed” in official reports, but their votes were not included in the public tally.
Late Tuesday, election officials added the 2.5 million votes from those stations to the public count: Lopez Obrador outpolled Calderon on these ballots by more than 145,000 votes, narrowing Calderon’s lead to slightly more than 257,000 ballots, or 0.6 of a percentage point.
Election authorities said as many as 900,000 votes remained to be added to the official tally because polling place results had not yet arrived at regional election headquarters. An undetermined number are from the remotest rural areas of southern Mexico, which lean toward Lopez Obrador.
The new figures were released after Lopez Obrador charged Monday that more than 3 million votes had been “lost” from the preliminary tallies released by the Federal Electoral Institute.
The Calderon campaign insisted that the final outcome of the election is not in doubt.
“The general tendencies and the result will not change,” said Calderon adviser Arturo Sarukhan. “Felipe Calderon is today the president-elect of Mexico.”
But leaders of Lopez Obrador’s Democratic Revolution Party said election officials had committed a serious error by leading Mexicans to believe nearly all the votes had been counted.
“It seems to me very grave, and unforgivable, that a fact of this nature was not released to the public,” said Jesus Ortega, Lopez Obrador’s campaign coordinator.
Tuesday’s developments were the latest twist in an already strange electoral saga pitting two foes on opposite ends of the ideological divide. The vote is the closest in Mexican history.
On election night, both of Mexico’s major television networks said their exit polls showed a statistical tie. Two hours after the polls closed, Federal Electoral Institute President Luis Carlos Ugalde said an official “quick count” based on a survey of 7 percent of the polling stations also showed the race was too close to call. Minutes later, both Lopez Obrador and Calderon claimed victory.
Ugalde reminded Mexicans in a radio interview Tuesday that the preliminary count issued by the institute so far has no legal standing. The official winner will only be determined after a recount of all the polling reports begins today. It remains unclear when the recount will be complete.
“We still do not have a winner,” Ugalde said Tuesday. He added that there was never any intention to hide the vote result from the public.
Lopez Obrador and his Democratic Revolution Party said Tuesday they would respect the result of a free and fair election, but they made it clear they were not yet convinced that the election had been conducted according to democratic standards. And they would not discount calling for public protests after the official count is complete.
“Do not doubt that we will defend our rights and that we will fight a battle to ensure the legitimacy of the electoral process,” said PRD President Leonel Cota.