Mexican elections

[Julio Huato <juliohuato@xxxxxxxxx>]

Quick report.

As you probably know by now, there's no official winner yet.  Both
López Obrador and Calderón have said they believe they won.
Officially, the final result will be posted on Wed.

As of July 3, 2006 8:25 AM, 93.6% of all polling places have been
reported and published on the PREP web site of the IFE
(http://www.ife.org.mx/prep2006/) as preliminary results.

Calderón is ahead with 36.58% of the votes, versus López Obrador's
35.48%.  When they started to post the preliminary results, Calderón's
lead was 5%+, but has since gradually declined to its current 1.1%.
We're talking about where 250-300K votes end up.

Over 3,500 polling places are yet to report their preliminary results.
These places are mostly (3K) in circumscription 1, the Northeast.
That doesn't bode well.  Most states in that region lean towards the
PAN.

For weeks, Julio Hernández and Jaime Avilés (La Jornada) have been
warning about a "cyber fraud."  Hildebrando Zavala, the brother in law
of Calderón, became fabulously rich in the last few years with
contracts to provide software services to a bunch of federal agencies,
including PEMEX and the state-owned electricity company (when Calderón
was secretary of energy), SEDESOL (a welfare program called
"Opportunities," where Zavala could get a hold of valuable databases
for campaigning), and the IFE (federal electoral institute).  The
course of action for López Obrador will depend on whether he can
demonstrate significant manipulation took place, not only legally but
also to the public.  Needless to say, the media is 95% pro PAN.  The
PRD has been collecting documentary evidence of the results by polling
place and they seem to believe they can prove their victory.

Julio