Teaching Comparative

Comparative Elections

James C. McKinley Jr., in Thursday's New York Times, does a good job of beginning a comparative study of electoral rules. Where would you "send" your students from here?

Long History of Vote Fraud Lingers in the Mexican Psyche

"Felipe Calderon was named the next president of Mexcio on Tuesday by a tribunal that confirmed that the vote was basically free and fair. Yet a significant slice of the voting public still believes that the election was marred by fraud and that the country’s electoral institutions are corrupt.

"To some extent that is because his leftist rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrado, has waged a fiery campaign to persuade his supporters that his narrow loss on July 2 was part of a broad conspiracy between President Vicente Fox and business leaders to deny him victory.

"But why do between a quarter and a third of voters, according to recent opinion polls, agree with him?
One reason is history. After decades of one-party rule sustained by fraudulent elections, many Mexicans still deeply distrust their institutions and courts. But it is also because Mexicans have a very different notion of electoral fraud than voters in the United States, a notion that goes beyond stuffing ballot boxes...

"Mr. López Obrador pointed out that more than half of the tally sheets from the nation’s 130,000 election precincts contained errors in arithmetic, a sign of widespread incompetence among poll workers or of extra ballots magically appearing in some boxes and disappearing from others...

"But the Mexican conception of fraud is strikingly expansive, compared with United States traditions, and by those lights the cries of fraud become more plausible.

"For instance, most of Mr. López Obrador’s supporters complain bitterly about the “intervention” of President Fox in the election. They talk about 'a state election' and the 'imposition' of the candidate from Mr. Fox’s conservative party, Felipe Calderón, whom the electoral tribunal finally proclaimed president-elect on Tuesday.

"There is no doubt that Mr. Fox used his position as president and his official tours to campaign vigorously against Mr. López Obrador. Though he never mentioned the leftist candidate by name, he used code words for him, railing against populism, demagogy and false messiahs.

"The president also warned against 'changing riders' in midstream and said that government handouts to the poor, a centerpiece of the leftist’s campaign, would bankrupt future Mexicans. Meanwhile, the Fox administration spent extravagantly on public service messages praising the government’s achievements.

"Such use of the bully pulpit may seem tame in the United States, but in Mexico it is against the law for a president or any elected official to use public resources to campaign for his party’s candidate. The law is rooted in history. For seven decades before Mr. Fox’s election in 2000, Mexico was ruled by one party, with the sitting president choosing his successor and spreading government largesse to make sure he was elected...

"Worse in many leftist’s minds were the actions of various business leaders. Toward the end of the campaign, the largest business association, as well as some big companies, spent more than $19 million on advertisements aimed at undermining Mr. López Obrador, who promised to raise taxes on the rich and on business.

"The advertisements never mentioned candidates by name. But some of them said, for instance, that Mexico did not need a dictator like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, to whom Mr. López Obrador is often compared by his enemies...

"United States voters are used to these 'soft money' campaigns and take them in stride. But here, once again, such spending is illegal under the election law and is plausibly considered to be fraud by many of Mr. López Obrador’s supporters. The magistrates agreed, saying the business leaders had broken the law. But they said the impact was too slight to warrant annulling the election...

"Mr. López Obrador’s followers also have no confidence in the Federal Electoral Institute, which organized the election. In October 2003, when congressional leaders were making deals to appoint new members to the institute’s governing board, Mr. López Obrador’s party was shut out...

"What is sure is that Mr. López Obrador has defined himself for many voters as the candidate who lost the election, not through his own errors but because the entire apparatus of the state was against him. That is an old tune in Mexico, one that many know the words to."

posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:46 AM