Gustavo Muñoz - justavo, kanchenjungo, zipi

Ayer salió una editorial en el New York Times que recomienda que sí se haga el conteo voto por voto. Quiero suponer entonces que los supuestos de mi post anterior están equivocados. ¿Alguien sabe bien cómo se llevaría a cabo el recuento de la elección voto por voto para que realmente sea viable?

Editorial
A Recount in Mexico
Published: July 7, 2006

When Mexican voters went to the polls to select a new president, many people believed that the worst possible outcome of the race between the conservative Felipe Calderón and the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador would be a near-tie that would leave the winner without the aura of authority necessary to govern effectively. If that is so, the results were as bad as conceivably possible.

Yesterday, Mexico’s Federal Election Institute, or I.F.E., announced that Mr. Calderón had won the presidency by half a percentage point. But Mr. López Obrador declared himself the real winner and demanded a complete recount of the votes.

The Western world has had quite a bit of experience with near-ties in recent years. The final outcome is never completely satisfactory for the side that winds up losing. Officials need to follow the existing election laws, but to interpret them as expansively as possible when it comes to recounting votes and checking for error or fraud.

Mexico used to be a global leader in election fraud. In 1988, when early results showed that a challenger to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party was ahead, the government announced that its vote-counting computer system had mysteriously broken down. It later released a count showing a narrow victory for the incumbent party. What happened on Sunday is a far cry from those bad old days. The Federal Election Institute is one of Mexico’s best-functioning institutions, and although it has been widely criticized for aspects of how it has handled this election, there have been no credible allegations of organized widespread fraud.

But there are enough problems to warrant a complete recount. Some polling stations that have recounted their ballots have found that the votes were misrecorded on tally sheets. The earlier discrepancies appeared to largely favor Mr. Calderón, in at least one case mistakenly awarding him hundreds of extra votes. The I.F.E. cannot legally order a recount of the entire presidential election. But the Federal Election Tribunal, an independent panel created to handle these kinds of disputes, could. In previous races, it has even gone so far as to call new elections in the states of Tabasco and Colima.

While election officials need to do everything possible to assure voters the count was fair, the candidates must behave responsibly as well. Mr. López Obrador has occasionally furthered his political career by inviting supporters to take to the streets. He has called for a rally Saturday, but he should resist inciting mass protests, which would harm Mexico’s stability and add to his image as a less-than-committed democrat. Mr. Calderón, for his part, should not oppose a recount. If the result favors him, he should be able to govern more effectively.

¿Qué podemos decir? Si se puede volver a contar, quizá la condición política del país obligue a hacerlo y así podamos estar totalmente tranquilos de que quien esté en el poder los siguientes seis años sea quien realmente ganó la mayoría relativa el 2 de julio. Hoy López dijo que en 2600 casos de los que se abrieron los paquetes electorales en el conteo distrital, el nuevo conteo reveló que el conteo original favorecía a Calderón. Habrá que estar atentos de cómo se desarrollarán los juicios en el TEPJF.