Mexico City – There were no hanging chads, but Mexico could be headed for a Florida- style showdown after preliminary results Monday showed ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon leading by a single percentage point in Mexico’s closest presidential race ever.
Leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, holed up in his apartment, faced the same predicament that Al Gore struggled with in 2000: to concede defeat despite the cries of his supporters that the election was stolen or risk political chaos by challenging the system.
Electoral officials said they would declare a winner after a long, official count starting Wednesday. The final word could come from an electoral tribunal that allows no appeal.
Sunday night’s quick count proved too close to call, setting off days of uncertainty and cries of fraud by fervent Lopez Obrador supporters, still bitter over the many manipulations of the vote that kept the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in power for seven decades until 2000.
Many had predicted violent street protests, but Lopez Obrador supporters apparently were waiting for orders from the leader they revere with a messianic devotion.
George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia and a former Virginia state legislator, said “the Mexican system is much more transparent” than the U.S. system.
Mexico has a single voter registry, a uniform photo identity card for voters and a national election law, he said, whereas “in the U.S., you have this crazy quilt of 50 state laws.” Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute is legally independent of the government, while in the U.S., partisan state officials tend to oversee the system – something that contributed to controversy over the 2000 presidential election in Florida.
