Mexicohio

Mexico's electoral court offered up a decision that will keep the status quo happy and, naturally, deny Mexico's electorate a full recount of the presidential vote. I am always impressed by the establishment's delaration of a putative love of democracy and it's apposite ability to refuse to actually and properly count votes. In fact, they have laws specifically restricting recounting ballots, making the process unnecessarily cumbersome. Or, as I am sure they view it, necessarily cumbersome. Recounting votes should not be an onerous task in a democracy. No one has any problem with checking, double checking and triple checking business transactions but counting votes twice, why, that's just plain crazy.

It was a hotly contested election and the number of polling station problems was immense; in Orbador country, scrubbed voter rolls courtesy of ChoicePoint, ballots found in dumpsters, exit poll mismatch with the vote count, long lines experienced in precincts strongly supportive of the populist who promised, among other things, to renegotiate NAFTA, something the business elite was none too keen on. It sounded all too typical. James K. Galbraith offered up an excellent review of the voting data that certainly demonstrates some bizarre behaviour, behaviour which is generally recognised as a sign that an election is being rigged in real time.

So, it looks like Mexicans will be denied the right to know what the real vote count was, while being told by the corporate establishment that all went well. Welcome, Mexico, to the new American century.