MEXICO CITY — Mexican electoral authorities said Wednesday they will recount more than half the ballot boxes used in the weekend’s presidential elections after finding inconsistencies in the vote tallies.
Of the 143,000 ballot boxes used during Sunday’s vote, 78,012 will be opened and the votes recounted, said Edmundo Jacobo, executive secretary of Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute.
Jacobo said the recount could be finished by Thursday.
Mexico’s electoral law states that the votes should be recounted if there are inconsistencies in the final tally reports, when the result shows a difference of one percentage point or less between the first and second place finishers or if all the votes in a ballot box are in favor of the same candidate.
With 99 percent of the vote tallied in the preliminary count, Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, led with 38 percent of the vote. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party had 32 percent.
Authorities also will recount ballots for the Senate and lower house of Congress.
Lopez Obrador has refused to accept the preliminary vote tallies, saying the election campaign was marred by overspending, vote-buying and favorable treatment of Pena Nieto by Mexico’s semi-monopolized television industry.
