Partial Recount in Mexico

Via the BBC:  Mexico faces partial recount in presidential election

Mexico’s electoral authorities have announced a recount of votes cast at more than half the polling stations in Sunday’s presidential election after finding inconsistencies.

[…]

Preliminary results gave Mr Pena Nieto a lead of more than six percentage points over Mr Lopez Obrador.

Executive Secretary of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) Edmundo Jacobo said the recount was "an exercise in openness and transparency".

He said votes cast at 78,012 of the 143,132 polling stations would be recounted.

The rules:

According to Mexico’s electoral law, votes should be recounted if any of the following apply:

  • there are inconsistencies in the final tally reports
  • the result shows a difference of one percentage point or less between the first and second-placed candidate
  • all the votes in one ballot box are cast in favour of the same candidate.

The second-place candidate wants a full recount due to allegations of vote-buying by the PRI (of course, I am not sure one could figure that out via a recount).

It would appear that the main impetus for the count would be the first of the bullet points.  As per CNN:

Taking advantage of the fact that election returns are available online, critics began circulating copies of what they described as suspicious returns.

One such document shared by PRI opponents is an electoral return from a district in Michoacan. It appears to show that 362 of 732 registered voters cast ballots, but that the PRI won 945 votes.

The results at the moment are based, as best as I can tell from the press accounts, on the initial quick count, and not a final count.  As such, it is unclear to me if what is happening is so much a recount as a full, detailed count.  Again via CNN:

Enrique Peña Nieto received the most votes, according to preliminary results released the night of Sunday’s balloting, and according to a quick count released by the election institute, known by its Spanish acronym IFE. The quick count gave Peña Nieto a margin of victory of between 6.07 and 7.65 percentage points.

New results will be out on Sunday.  I expect that the second place finisher, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is going to be disappointed once more.

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Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. Matthew Shugart says:

    The accounts that I’ve seen of anomalies are based on the PREP (preliminary full results), not the conteo rapido.

    In fact, some of this analysis has been done by one of our grad students.

    The anomalies are relatively minor, but unlike one of its large neighbors,, Mexico has national legislation committed to accuracy and transparency.

  2. @Matthew Shugart:

    but unlike one of its large neighbors,

    Indeed, I was thinking this morning that this illustrates (contra defenders of the electoral college) that recounts can be done in large, federal countries, if needed, in a national presidential elections.