Zeenews Bureau
Mexico City: Amidst fraud claims, Mexican electoral authorities announced on Wednesday that they will recount more than half the ballot boxes used in the weekend’s Presidential Election.
Edmundo Jacobo, the executive secretary of Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute, said that 78,012 ballot boxes, out of the 143,000 used during Sunday’s vote, will be opened and the votes recounted.
Electoral officials expect the recount plus the final, official overall count on the presidential vote to be ready by Sunday, said Ana Fuentes, an IFE spokesman.
Mexico’s electoral law states that votes should be recounted if there are inconsistencies in the final tally reports, if there is a difference of one percentage point or less between the first and second place finishers or if all the votes in a ballot box are in favour of the same candidate.
With 99 percent of the vote tallied in the preliminary count, Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, led with 38 percent of the vote. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party had 32 percent.
Authorities also will recount 61 percent of the ballot boxes in the vote for Senate seats and 60 percent in the vote for the lower house of Congress, Jacobo said.
The presidential front-runner expressed confidence on Wednesday about the recount. “I trust that the final tally will be consistent with the preliminary count,” Pena Nieto said.
Lopez Obrador has refused to accept the preliminary vote tallies, saying the election campaign was marred by overspending, vote-buying and favourable treatment of Pena Nieto by Mexico’s semi-monopolised television industry.
The leftist candidate said on Tuesday that his team had detected irregularities at 113,855 polling places, and called for a total recount.
(With Agency inputs)
First Published: Thursday, July 05, 2012, 11:14