It ain’t over yet

“The most trustworthy and controlled voting system in Latin America”

Cesár Gaveria, former Costa Rican President and head of the OAS election monitor

President Gaveria doesn’t speak well of Latin American elections… or maybe he does. He was only speaking of the voting process itself —  with real-time checking of IFE cards, purple thumbs, security paper ballots, transparent ballot boxes, etc. … which is a model for the world, if extremely expensive: ($400 pesos per vote, although that includes public financing for political parties).

IFE surprised me and did the right thing, ordering the examination of ballots from about half of the 143,114 precincts nationwide.  As of this evening, about half of that half of the precincts have been recalculated, but we won’t know the results for another day or two.

Whatever the results, they won’t end speculation about the election itself.  There are still a number of those “other” issues — vote buying, ,   Nor, for that matter, will it end the uncertainty over the whole 1 July election.  Gaveria was specifically NOT talking about  vote buying schemes, blatant media manipulation, ballot stuffing, and the cavalier disregard for campaign finance laws, which were outside his brief as an international election observer.  There are still several unresolved complaints not related to the vote count yet to be heard by the Elections Tribunal (sort of the appeals court for the Elections Commission) which could conceivably annul the results in some districts, requiring a do-over election in those districts.