RE: Calderon declared the winner!I would like issue to be settled, but it is not settled yet.
Calderón Wins Narrow Victory in Mexico Election
Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
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By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: July 6, 2006
MEXICO CITY, July 6 — An official tally of votes today showed that the conservative candidate, Felipe Calderón, had won a narrow victory of less than 200,000 votes in Mexico's presidential election. But his leftist opponent said he would demand a recount in court, and called for his supporters to demonstrate on Saturday.
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Luis J. Jimenez for The New York Times
Supporters of Andrés Manuel López Obrador chanted outside an office where votes were being counted Wednesday in Mexico City.
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Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
A packet of votes in Guadalajara was recounted after a mistake was found on the tally sheet accompanying them.
"We cannot accept these results," said the leftist candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City who has championed the cause of Mexico's impoverished millions. "There are many irregularities," he said, adding: "We are going to ask for clarity. We are going to ask for a vote count, polling place by polling place."
His decision not to concede defeat was a sign that Mexico is still far from having a new President. It also meant that the next move belongs to a special tribunal set up to handle electoral disputes, a court that has never before been ask to make such a momentous ruling.
After 24 hours of recounting tally sheets from 130,000 polling places, electoral officials said this morning that Mr. Calderón had 35.8 percent of the vote and Mr. López Obrador 35.3 percent, with 99.6 percent of the vote counted. A third major candidate, Roberto Madrazo, was far behind with 22.3 percent.
Mr. Calderón said in the pre-dawn hours this morning that he would fight tooth and nail to keep his victory, however narrow. He and his partisans in the National Action Party have accused Mr. López Obrador of seeking to annul what they consider a legitimate victory by mounting a court challenge.
"We are going to defend the votes, and I ask you all to be alert, because we are going to call on all of you to make sure these votes are not canceled, that they are not thrown the trash, and that no one tries to negate for caprice or for ambition what 41 million Mexicans have decided," Mr. Calderón said.
Mr. López Obrador's decision to hold a rally on Saturday also suggested that he would use street demonstrations to put public pressure on the court to grant his request for a full recount. He has a history of using marches to protest what he considered fraudulent elections that did not go his way.
The Federal Electoral Insitute is expected to produce a final vote count later today. It will then submit the figures to the Electoral Tribunal for approval on Sunday, usually a pro-forma process. Mr. López Obrador then will have four days in which to present his case for a recount.
Mr. López Obrador and leaders of his Party of the Democratic Revolution have complained that, during the official tally on Wednesday, local election officials ignored their representative's demands for a recount of packets of votes from polling places that they thought yielded anomalous results.