Calderon Wins Recount

With 99.52% of the votes recounted Calderon leads by 0.45% over Lopez Obrador, a margin of 150,000 votes. Obrador has anounced his intention to challenge the results in court. There certainly were some irregularities in this election, reports of ballot boxes being thrown out, as well as polling stations not having enough ballots for people who wanted to vote. I have heard nothing of any other ballots that remain uncounted, unless there are uncounted ballots to go back and add to the count the only place Obrador's challenges could go would be for a hand recount of each individual ballot, but that evidently would violate Mexican law.

Luis Carlos Ugalde, head of the Federal Electoral Institute, which is tabulating the results, said Wednesday that he was unsure how long the count would take. The process is complicatedby a law that allows for the contents of the vote packets to be opened only if the tally sheets, or the packages, appear to have been tampered with or damaged. Such packets are then sliced open and a vote-by-vote count is conducted.