The new fraud: Electoral tourism

El Universal has had some excellent columns as of late, and one of them is Denise Maerker's colum on "New forms of electoral fraud." I remember reading just one story on this subject from Mexico State, and Maerker puts a welcome spotlight on it again: PRI - because all the examples involve the party - is trying out a new method of influencing elections that has so far slipped under the radar screen of electoral authorities.

Simply put: In very competitive elections, with months of anticipation, local communities all of a sudden see a rush of new people moving to the area. They then try to gain residency, get a local voter card, and maintain it just long enough to vote and influence the election result.

The beast has a name: "Electoral tourism." It is far to early to say how widespread it is, and clearly it is a complicated operation that is not pulled off easily. Yet it seems fair to posit, as does Maerker, that this the new electoral fraud.

Almost makes you miss the good ole' vote tacos.

Whatever happened to primaries? The dedazo alive and well, and not only within PRI

The charade witnessed this weekend, when rather than actually running in any kind of primary or internal party vote, Eruviel Ávila was simply "declared" the PRI's candidate in Mexico State, was hardly just a one-time throwback to PRI's infamous dedazo process, where the outgoing governor/president/etc would simply designate his next successor as the designate of the party. In Nayarit, the exact same thing happened: Here, Roberto Sandoval Castañeda, mayor of the capital Roberto Sandoval Castañeda, was yesterday pronounced a "candidate of unity" by the PRI to be the next governor of the state.

Yet this is hardly limited to the PRI: As columist Denise Maerker pointed out in today's El Universal, PAN, in declaring that its candidate for Mexico State governor, alliance with PRD or no alliance, would be Luis Felipe Bravo Mena, is replicating the very practice.

And lest we forget: The backers of Alejandro Encinas in the PRD are calling for the very same thing, to simply drop any internal process due to prominent advantages of Encinas - poll numbers, name recognition etc. Now, Encinas may very well be the "natural" candidate of the PRD, and the only one with a minimal chance of winning the Mexico State election. Yet for the PRD's sake - a party for whom democratization has been the emblem since its inception - I truly hope the party will not fall into the temptation of simply dropping the primary or any semblance of open selection process, and in turn simply declare Encinas its "unity candidate" as well. If it does, it will truly add to the old saying that in Mexico, everyone carries a little priista inside of them.

More on Calderón's statment; Gustavo Madero bactracks

Regarding Calderón's statement that the party had to look for the best possible candidate for 2012, whether a member or not, I asked, does Calderón have a particular non-PAN candidate in mind?

Writing in today's El Universal Denise Maerker, who I find to be a very sensible journalist and columnist, ask very much the same question, and notably claims that Calderón's declaration was "not an innocent suggestion."

She list three possible reasons for Calderón's comment on 2012:
- He doesn't think PAN has any winning candidate
- He is thinking of a possible alliance with the PRD
- He is playing a game, trying to cover up who his real preferred candidate is

Note as well that PAN appears backtrack on its seeming endorsement of Calderóns comment/proposal; party president Gustavo Madero said that it is in any case "99.99 percent sure" that PAN's 2012 candidate will be a party member" (though former president Vicente Fox backs what Calderón appeared to suggest).
We'll see.