Vote buying may have made difference in Mexico election

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Mon, Jul. 17, 2006
Vote buying may have made difference in Mexico election
By Alfredo Corchado

The Dallas Morning News

(MCT)

MEXICO CITY - The women of Colonia Vicente Guerrero showed up at their precinct at noon July 2 to cast their ballots in the presidential election. But before they even reached their destination, representatives from Mexico's three major political parties stopped them with irresistible propositions, they said.

Representatives of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and the National Action Party, or PAN, offered them beans, rice, sugar, salt and cooking oil, the women said. The offer from the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, included a couple of pounds of tortillas, but they had to provide names, addresses and phone numbers of at least one relative, the women said. And if PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador lost, they said they were told, they or a relative would have to march on his behalf.

At another polling place near the Zocalo, Lourdes de los Reyes, 53, a PRD polling observer, noticed some voters were taking pictures with their cell phones as they marked their choice for president, she recalled.

When she questioned one voter, she said, she was told that "in order to keep our jobs, we must vote against Lopez Obrador and for Felipe Calderon," the PAN's candidate.
(snip/...)

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/world/15056187.htm

[IndyOp]

1. I am glad to see this in a Kansas City newspaper -

Of course there were also many other efforts to steal the election - 100,000's of votes for Lopez Obrador were reported 'blank'; PAN stuffed ballot boxes with Calderon votes; PAN used the voter registration rolls for illegal purposes - including, quite probably, removing likely PRD voters from the voter rolls.

We all *must* learn about all of these methods and quickly recognize that they have - and are now - happening in the US.

On Edit: I, however, am *HIGHLY* suspicious that PAN put people on the ground to pose as PRD supporters who gave out food and told voters that if Lopez Obrador lost they would have to march.

If you want to get a feeling for what is happening on the ground - watch Greg Palast on DemocracyNow! I have more confidence that I understand what is happening if I can see the people, instead of read a paper.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/12/146201

Also you might check out the 173-picture long slide of yesterday's demonstration in support of Lopez Obrador. The people do *not* look like they are being paid. They look like they want to live in a democracy:

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/world/0607/gallery.elections.mexico/frameset.exclude.html

US readers THINK PLEASE: Who has to make an effort to steal the votes of the middle-class and poor? Lopez Obrador is beloved for providing social programs, for encouraging people to not pay their power bills to fight price-gouging power companies, and for pledging to use Mexico's oil wealth for the good of all people. Would he have to make an effort to steal votes or would the group who has to make an effort to steal votes be the PAN - the Bush administration's favorite?

[Kelvin Mace]

3. Once again...

the tried and true methods work fine.

[IndyOp]

5. The old methods work fine. The new methods accentuate the old.

Election fraud is an octupus with many, many tentacles:

Disenfranchisement IS the problem.
Ballot box stuffing and discarding votes the counters don't like IS the problem.
Electronic-voting machines and tabulators ARE the problem.

The genius of cheating with e-voting machines and tabulators is that it is so "clean" - citizens like the machines, you can cheat bigger on the machines, you can cheat without locals being involved or aware of the cheat, you can cheat before, during, and after the election.

Even disenfranchising voters is "clean" compared to old-fashioned methods: If only a few people at each poll are selectively disenfranchised then an outcry is less likely to occur than if there are goons outside a PRD polling place that block everyone from voting.

Election fraud is like being eaten alive by piranha's -- the bites are small, each is painful, it is damned near impossible to fight the attackers, and it is deadly. (You have to prevent the attack entirely or keep the number of attackers small so that you can fight the ones still in the water).



And, I have absolutely no explanation for why this reply is so full of sea creatures, but as a reward for reading the whole thing, here is a friendly manatee:

[Kelvin Mace]

9. No question

I have explained to people that priorities must be:

1) Secure voting, with a paper ballot and dislcosed code.
2) Aggressive laws which prevent and prosecute disenfranchisement.
3) An end to gerrymandering.

Once these three issues are addressed, we can then move on to other issues like campaign finance reform, etc.

[robinlynne]

12. I love your manatee.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. ...or throwing them in the basura.

[fasttense]

4. I have a hard time believing Obrador paid over a million people

and forced them to march against their will on his behalf. Alfredo Corchado has another article on the protest on Sunday which implies that over a million people protesting in Mexico is not a big deal. I find that hard to believe. Here is a link to his other article: http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/15053668.htm

Alfredo Corchado has firmly labeled Obrador a leftist. I'm not sure I trust this reporter to be unbiased but he seems to try harder than the AP.

[lonestarnot]

6. That's not what it said.

[Adelante]

7. PRD has said they paid their poll workers

Not marchers. I asked a close friend of mine who counted votes at the casilla in her village on election day if she was paid. She was paid $20 US for expenses - lunch, travel, etc., by the IFE. I asked if she were paid by any political party and she said she wasn't. She was an AMLO voter, but not a PRD representative, in Jalisco.

About "leftist" - DU and other sites called AMLO a leftist for two years, similar to how Dean was called a "leftist" in 2003. I don't think of AMLO as a leftist, either, especially, but the press hasn't invented the practice of calling him leftist, so it's hard to complain about it, for me.

[Acadia Blue]

8. vote buying and other methods. Conservatives are filthy in every

single country in the world

[IndyOp]

10. More on Mexico Elections - One EXCLUSIVE to DU..

Exclusive to DU !! Guanajuato 2006 is Mexico’s Florida 2000
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1654610&mesg_id=1654610

James K. Galbraith: Doing Maths in Mexico
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x440950

:kick:

[Judi Lynn]

11. Great articles. The second one was especially helpful.

Thanks for posting them.

I'm glad there are such bright, determined people studying this. I hope their input can help change this mess.