Demands for a recount Soon after it was clear that the official count would result with
Felipe Calderón ahead,
Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated that he and his party, the
PRD, would fight for a "vote-by-vote" general recount. He presented nine boxes and 900 pages of supposed evidence alleging mathematical electoral irregularities in 50,000 polling places to the
Federal Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF). In addition, he claimed that in areas with large numbers of López Obrador supporters, election officials nullified 900,000 votes. López Obrador and his supporters began organizing mass protests, marches, and civil disobedience, culminating in a massive rally in
Mexico City's historic
Zócalo on 30 July 2006. Estimates of the crowd at the rally range from 500,000 to 3,000,000 supporters. Additionally, López Obrador's campaign set up
plantones, or encampments, inside the Zócalo and along
Paseo de la Reforma, one of
Mexico City's main arteries, for 47 days and slowing traffic for hours. The encampments were widely unpopular, as 65% of inhabitants in Mexico City opposed them. On Saturday, 5 August, the TEPJF met in public session to decide the outcome of López Obrador's request for a recount. The seven magistrates voted unanimously that there was only sufficient legal justification to order the recount of 11,839 ballot boxes in 155 districts (9.2% of the total), thus rejecting López Obrador's public demand that all votes and ballot boxes be recounted. The Tribunal based its decision of a partial recount on its finding that, despite publicly demanding a vote by vote general recount, López Obrador's party only presented legal claims to less than 44,000 polling stations, or less than 34%. Therefore, legally, only those 44,000 polling stations were deemed controversial by the TEPJF. The Tribunal ruled that the non-controversial votes should not be recounted, because "the certainty asked by the Coalition (of López Obrador's party) is tied to the respect of the citizen counts in non-controversial polling stations". However, the Tribunal did certify that principles of certainty in the elections called for a justified recount in some of the controversial stations, as irregularities were found. In the western state of
Jalisco alone, 2,705 ballot boxes (33% of the state's total) will be recounted due to "evident mathematical errors". The state with the highest percentage of ballot boxes to be reopened is
Aguascalientes with 436 or 35% of its 1,226 total ballot boxes. Other states with a high percentage of ballot boxes authorized to be opened include:
Tamaulipas, 942 ballot boxes (or 23.7% of total ballot boxes);
Campeche, 170 (18.3%);
Chihuahua, 727 (15%);
Durango, 344 (15.4%);
Nuevo León, 508 (10%);
San Luis Potosí, 495 (16%);
Sinaloa, 334 (7.7%);
Yucatán, 228 (10.5%);
Zacatecas, 221 (9.23%);
Querétaro, 9.4%. States with small percentages include:
Chiapas, 81 ballot boxes (1.6%);
Distrito Federal, 227 (1.85%);
Estado de México, 362 (2.33%);
Michoacán, 300 (5.5%);
Morelos, 124 (6%);
Puebla, 194 (3.22%);
Veracruz, 396 (6.56%); and
Quintana Roo, 10 (0.8%). The recount commenced on Wednesday, 9 August, [https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mexican-recount-begins-as-protests-expand-1.574957 (CBC) (VOA) and concluded on Sunday, 13 August. Only after calculating the recounted votes will the TEPJF declare the candidate with the most votes as president-elect. On Friday, 11 August both disputing parties held press conferences, in which, despite the TEPJF's insistence that no recount results would be released until Sunday, each provided their own internal figures based on their observers in the recount. These figures clashed dramatically; according to the PAN, 75% of the votes had been recounted and the results confirmed that the initial count was "perfect", with fewer than three errors per ballot box and no
systemic bias. (This is the message that most of the press reported, although others reported that the "75% without errors" figure was out of the completed, not the total, recount; still, the figures were hard to square with Coalition claims.) The Coalition claimed that only 60% of the recount was complete, and that in this recount their party had gained an average of 29 votes per ballot box. (Again, this was the message in most of the press, though other press outlets seemed to imply that the Coalition claims included lost or excess ballots as well as miscounted ones.). On 28 August the TEPJF announced the results of the partial recount, subtracting 81,080 votes for Calderón, 76,897 votes for López Obrador, 63,114 for Roberto Madrazo, 5,962 for Patricia Mercado, 2,743 for Roberto Campa, and 7,940 for the remaining candidates. A total of 237,736 votes were annulled out of the approximately 4 million votes recounted. That means around 6% of the recounted votes were annulled. Despite the Tribunal's ruling, and despite the ruling being based on his party's decision of not contesting all polls judicially, López Obrador continues to demand the "vote-by-vote" general recount, promising to continue civil disobedience and sit-ins. He was quoted as saying, "We don't want a portion of democracy. We want 100% democracy." [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5251252.stm A day before the end of the recount, López Obrador's coalition threatened with national mobilizations to prevent the "imposition" of Calderón, if the PAN candidate was confirmed the winner of the election.
Calls for electoral reform On Thursday November 23, 2006 the European Union (EU) election observer mission presented its final report. The report was generally positive and defended the official result of the July 2 presidential election saying they "reflect[ed the legitimate will of the Mexican people." However, the report also expressed concerns and raised several criticisms, both general and specific, of the electoral process and the election. The report includes 48 specific recommendations for future reform to "strengthen the electoral process", such as introducing random automatic recounts in the case of a close election, shortening the campaign period, considering the introduction of a
two round run-off system for presidential elections, and general clarifications in the electoral law (e.g., clarifying the grounds for requesting a recount and for the annulling of the election). A 24 November 2006 article by
The Herald Mexico reports: "All of Mexico's major parties have called for reforms to electoral laws, including clearer limits on funding, greater transparency on campaign spending and a shorter campaign period." The article also stated "The EU mission, headed by Spanish Deputy
José Ignacio Salafranca, said on Thursday that a runoff election would help the nation's electoral system, especially following results as close as this year's, when Felipe Calderón beat Andrés Manuel López Obrador by less than a percentage point. In a news conference, Salafranca said that while a second round would be expensive, it would give 'greater democratic legitimacy' to the result."
Subsequent political crisis The high degree of controversy and polarization that resulted from this election gave way to a grave political crisis in Mexico throughout 2006. The elections were more controversial than those of
1988, and in a symbolic act, on 20 November López Obrador organized a ceremony to take office as the "Legitimate President of Mexico", followed by his sympathizers. Calderón's inauguration ceremony on 1 December at the
Congress of the Union was tense and lasted less than five minutes, as he barely managed to recite the
oath of office while the PRD legislators shouted in protest against the alleged electoral fraud and attempted to impede his inauguration, and afterward he quickly left the building for security reasons as some of the legislators engaged in violent brawls. Besides the claims of fraud, Calderón took office with the smallest percentage of votes for a winning presidential candidate in Mexican history (35.8%), which meant that his administration would face severe legitimacy problems. Only a month after taking office, Calderón declared war on the drug cartels and organized crime, thus beginning the
Mexican drug war. This was considered by many as an immediate strategy to gain popular legitimacy and acceptance for the new President after the convoluted elections. Filmmaker
Luis Mandoki produced a documentary titled "Fraude: México 2006", in which he chronicles many events of the second half of
Vicente Fox's administration that led up to the heated 2006 election, and highlights the irregularities that took place during the process. The film has a duration of 110 minutes and topped the Mexican box office upon its 2007 debut. In a 2011 opinion poll published by
El País about whether the 2006 elections had been fraudulent, 49% of the respondents believed that the election was rigged, against 43% who believed it wasn't rigged and 8% who were unsure. In 2017 PRI member and former governor of Coahuila,
Humberto Moreira accused Calderón of "stealing the Presidency" in 2006. In October 2018, Roberto Madrazo, who was the 2006 PRI presidential candidate, stated in an interview that according to the data he received after the election, López Obrador had been the winner. Mexican sociologist
Jacqueline Peschard has identified the "breakdown in consensus that nearly resulted" because of this election as a major turning point in the
history of Mexico as a functioning and legitimate
liberal democracy. ==References==