The re-counting of the votes in 9% of Mexico's voting stations is in the 5th and final day, as ordered by Mexico's electoral court. Mexico's
La Jornada, tells us how it's going in this self translated account I've included on the jump.
The article is an analysis by Antonio Gershenson. It is titled THE SECOND SHAVING:
Open ballot boxes, tally sheets and other documents without official seals or without signatures (required by law for every ballot box, ballot envelope, and tally sheet), are the fingerprints of a second vote-shaving of results for Manuel Lopez Obrador, also including sometimes increasing the votes for the right. It involves hiding the fact that the recount would not show the same results as the "official truth", which gave the right victory by less than 1% of the vote. In practice, it would be necessary to reproduce in the ballot boxes what had been done in the results of the first vote-shaving. For the purpose of this second vote-shaving, the local fraudsters intervened, but it was already something quite complicated, and the results were disastrous. This was done on occasion with utmost stupidity, although we cannot deny that PRI members at the service of PAN were able to do a skilled job not possible to discern, that is ex-PRI members well versed over decades of voter-fraud -- stupid to the extent that in some cases the ballot boxes were opened, and their official seals violated. Moreover, there have been cases where the list of voters were missing, where the official certification of votes and results were missing, where all of the ballots were missing, and in others where everything was missing. There have also been cases of more ballots found than announced in the official results, which indicates ballot stuffing in favor of Calderon, while outside the public view; or the absence of ballots in comparison to the official results, which indicate that there were Lopez Obrador ballots removed from the boxes, some of which have reappeared in trash dumps.
I want to give you a very clear example. In the first day of recounts, in the 5th District of Mexico City, it turned out that in the first polling places where results were recounted, "they were cleared". The ballots recounted were exactly the same as the official results. This was a rarity, because in other polling places there were differences, if only minor. But it was also published that "Deputy Maria Luisa Contreras (PRD) announced that the three ballot boxes that have been examined so far lack the signatures of the polling judges, or of the party poll watchers". Stated differently, the original ballot packages had been swapped with brand new ones, without the obligatory signatures, and with the ballots already adjusted to verify the official count.
It is thus clear that the thousands of additional votes that have been "recovered" for Lopez Obrador are only those that have survived this second vote-shaving. They are few in relation to the 240,000 vote lead that Calderon officially has over Lopez Obrador. But they are also few in relation to those that would result if the votes were annuled in the voting places where the irregularities that have been seen make it impossible to determine how many votes each party actually received. For example, the violation of the official seals make it impossible to determine how many votes were stuffed or removed from the ballot boxes by the electoral criminals. Where we find, for example, 40 more votes than were officially received, it is impossible to determine how many votes were actually cast for each of the parties, and on and on successively.
This makes it important to annul the vote count from polling places that show anomolies, and they are many. By means of photographs on various occasions, and even videotape, we are seeing voter fraud of a type handed down from the most primitive of times. The PANistas were counting only on generalized fraud, that which is computerized. They were not counting on having to use the fraud of local bosses or similar -- the stuffing of ballot boxes, after the vote count, with pro-Calderon ballots, the removal of Pro-Lopez Obrador ballots, etcetera. Thus we have the second vote-shaving, uneven because it did not happen in all places, that of entering warehouses, violation of seals, etcetera, that of wanting to "fix" things: But in many cases because they did not even give this effort a modicum of care to hide the attempt, they left things half done, and plenty of tracks to see their work.
Now the choice is: They apply the law, nullify the violated polling boxes giving the scare of a lifetime to the candidate and leaders of PAN, or else they allow the violation of the law in a very evident manner, "ligitimating" this most public fraud and accelerating the deterioration of this situation in the country. This may be the last opportunity to provide the situation with an institutional result.
I can see now why the PAN is so adamantly against a polling-place-by-polling-place vote-by-vote recount. The PAN couldn't possibly launder so many boxes. Even 9% seems to be tough.
I hope you enjoy this blast of fresh air journalism, free from the bias of the American media.