2006, again: Errors, but no fraud, according to Woldenberg.

It was not the first time and I'll bet a Herradura Reposado that it will not be last time that the contested 2006 election will be subject of academic panels and conferences. 
Yet academic José Woldenberg's take on the 2006 elections are nonetheless significant. Woldenberg is a man who throughout his career has always been placed squarely on the political left; he was even a PRD member for couple of years, though he left it in 1991.   Notably, he was also the first IFE president (1997-2003), and the UNAM professor remains a man of very high credibility to many - to the point where not a few people, including many perredistas, have toyed around with the idea of "Woldenberg Presidente!" for 2012. 
(which probably would make him the first Jewish presidential candidate in Mexican history, though I'll defer to Mexfiles' expertise on that subject). 


Regardless: Woldenberg in a recent conference on the democratic transition in Mexico noted that nobody has presented any evidence that Calderón's victory was artificially engineered: The IFE commited mistakes" - "I emphasize, mistakes, not fraud" - Woldenberg dixit. 


The mistakes were, according to Woldenberg, a badly designed PREP, the Preliminary Electoral Results Program, and to only declare that the results were "close" but not giving any  figures from the quick count that night. 


(Actually, Luis Carlos Ugalde, the much maligned IFE president, dealt with this as well in his Así lo viví, now out in cheap bolsillo edition, , which is very much worth a read. Here Ugalde relates that he still wonders if this was a mistake, yet points out that giving out preliminary numbers that favored on of the candidates, where the difference was still within margin of error, might very well have led to the candidate apparently in the lead simply declaring victory.)


Yet here I agree more with Virgilio Andrade, who in my opinion is one of the brightest stars to have served on the IFE. Andrade accepts that the PREP was not clear, but that the real problem was the IFE had not explained properly in advanced that deals had been made in advance with the parties that no winner were to be declared if the preliminary results of the quick count (not to be confused with the PREP) did not give a clear winner.


Regardless, Woldenberg is hardly likely to score any points with the AMLO camp for his recent reaffirmation that while the elections were polarized and dirty, there was no fraud in 2006.