IFE Answers AMLO

Well, first AMLO was incensed because the IFE - consistent with an agreement among the parties arrived at in February - did not count contested votes among the announced totals in the initial post-election count. Those votes were reviewed by officials of all the parties, ratified, and added into the vote totals.

Obviously this is a shocking travesty - proof of a stolen election.

And now he has shown a video of a man in Guanajuato stuffing ballots for Congress into a ballot box. This too, proves a stolen Presidency.

Well now IFE has explained (original in Spanish) that the man in question is a worker at precinct 2227, in Salamanca, Guanajuato. During the election night count, 8-10 ballots for Congress were discovered in the ballot box for President, so the President of the polling station directed that they be transferred to the correct ballot box. This was approved and videotaped by the poll observer for the PRD (AMLO's party), who made no protest during the event.

Missing ballots, stuffed boxes, mischievous racoons... so far AMLO's complaints have been knocked down as fast as they've come up. But it's starting to look like he's just trying to throw up dust and cause as much confusion as he can. And yet, while Mexico is not the former Soviet Union, this is a nation that can remember when government workers drove to the polls with ballot boxes already full, and substituted them for the real boxes for counting. Elections were predetermined as a matter of course. If 8-10 ballots here and there is the best that AMLO can come up with, I wonder if he can generate the outrage he expects.

Back to the top.