Election Fraud a Tradition : Mexicans Fear ‘Alchemy’ May Mar Presidential Vote

As Mexico prepares to vote for a new president 10 days from now, talk of possible electoral fraud in favor of the ruling party’s standard-bearer is increasingly being voiced by candidates, political experts and common citizens alike.

The presidential vote is scheduled for July 6. A victory by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, is considered a foregone conclusion, given the party’s traditional dominance at the polls. Nonetheless, in these days of economic decline, opposition to Salinas and his party is at an all-time high.

Many Mexicans wonder openly whether the ruling party will use “alchemy”--Mexican argot for ballot tampering--to turn a leaden campaign into election-day gold. As voting fraud vies with the economy as the leading issue in this campaign, the question for Salinas is not whether he will triumph but whether his victory is accepted as clean.

“Today, when partisan opposition has gained strength, the theme of electoral fraud reappeared as one of the cruxes of political debate,” wrote political analyst Lorenzo Meyer in the magazine Nexos.

And Juan Molinar, a leading scholar of Mexican elections, said: “It’s not that journalists, combative voters or activists have only recently discovered that in Mexico, elections are manipulated. They have just re-evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of conforming.”

Skepticism about the vote sharpened recently when officials of the PRI, as the country’s biggest party is known, announced that they expect to win 20 million votes out of a pool of 38 million eligible voters. With abstentions alone likely to reduce the vote by 35%, the claim of winning 20 million seemed preposterous.

Salinas himself has tried to allay suspicions that fraud is in the air.

“I want to win and also have the people believe in our victory,” he said last year at the beginning of his campaign.

Hits ‘Old Practices’

In a recent interview with The Times, he admitted that some polling officials, out of habit, may try to alter the results. “In some regions, some people may try the old practices,” he said. “But old practices cannot be defended. In the first place, there will be greater vigilance of the whole community, and secondly, there is a new mentality in the practice of Mexican politics that I propose to emphasize.”

Two main candidates have emerged to challenge Salinas--and ballot tampering--in this campaign: Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a leftist PRI renegade, and Manuel J. Clouthier, who represents the conservative National Action party, the longtime No. 2 political force in Mexico. Both candidates have cautioned the PRI against attempting fraud at the polls.

While stopping short of threatening violence, Cardenas warned recently that “we are not willing that they (the PRI) alter the vote nor limit the exercise of our rights.” Clouthier has long warned that his followers will carry out acts of “civil disobedience” if they detect irregularities.

Generally, citizens appear to be in a volatile mood as election day approaches. Earlier this month, word spread in Mexico City that the PRI was secretly printing extra presidential ballots at a clandestine printing house. Scores of youths stormed the building and ran off with hundreds of ballots.

As it turned out, the ballots were being printed for local elections in Sonora state rather than for the presidential election.

Say Even Dead Can Vote

Such incidents reflect just how convinced many Mexicans are that fraud is inevitable--and perhaps with good reason. There is a joke, recalled Jose Reyes Rojas, that Mexico is so democratic that even the dead can vote. Reyes should know. He is a self-described former “alchemist,” an election fixer in the small town of San Jeronimo, located in the Toluca Valley to the west and high above Mexico City.

“I remember a party official came up from Mexico City a few years ago with a voting list and asked me which one of these people were deceased. I pointed out this one and that one,” Reyes said. “Later, these names appeared on lists with a stamp by their name signifying they had voted.”

Abel Ramos, a one-time election official from Mexicalcingo in central Mexico, recounted a similar tale: “Once the voting was over, the ballots were taken to the slaughterhouse. A soldier kept guard. Instead of nullifying the unmarked ballots, we marked them and filled the ballot boxes.”

Another fixer, who gave only his first name, Eufemio, for publication, performed similar duties in nearby Santiago Tilapa and described his experiences: “We used to just add zeroes after the numbers on the official tallies. Say, for instance, 70 people voted. We would put 700 and mark the rest of the ballots-- pim, pum, pam . And if anyone objected, there was a policeman standing outside. You know, to keep order.”

What the former “alchemists” recounted was not especially remarkable given the long history of vote fraud in Mexico. Rather, their public discussion of the matter is unusual. Their open talk is a reflection of the heated nature of this presidential campaign; the former “alchemists” are dissidents from the PRI and now are supporting opposition candidates. What once were dirty family secrets are now broadcast as a warning of possible fraud in the coming vote.

Vigilante Groups

Some former “alchemists” are even training vigilante groups to be on the lookout for ballot tampering.

“Who better to watch for fraud than the ones who know all the tricks?” said Octavio Moreno, a former PRI member who now belongs to the Democratic Assembly for Effective Suffrage, a new election watchdog group.

There seem to be as many ways to carry out fraud in Mexico as there are voting booths. Recently, the National Autonomous University undertook a study of electoral rolls in Mexico City in which between one-tenth and one-third of the listed names were found to be invalid: sometimes the people did not exist; sometimes they were underage or dead.

The study described voting lists in six of the city’s 40 districts as “debased for fraud.” In four others, the critique ranged from “super-unreliable” to “impossible for holding elections.”

“PRI alchemy has assured the first step in fraud,” wrote Cuauhtemoc Rivera, author of the National University study.

Voter ID Cards

Careless issuing of voter identification cards is also a potential source of illegal votes. In San Jeronimo, for example, student Pedro Salinas Narvaez received two identification cards: one with his name, another with the name of Ignacio Salinas Narvaez, who at least in his household does not exist. Theoretically, Salinas Narvaez can vote twice.

That would not be good for the PRI; Salinas Narvaez favors an opposition candidate.

In several cities and towns, government officials are systematically gathering data from voting cards. In schools in the town of Tenango del Valle, for example, teachers asked their students to bring them the voting credentials of their parents. The teachers copied down the names and numbers and returned the cards. Neither school nor election officials will answer inquiries as to why such information was requested. But old-time “alchemists” have an explanation.

“They can use the data to create new voting lists, which they can fill with votes for the PRI,” said Eufemio in nearby Santiago Tilapa.

Fraud Sometimes Brazen

PRI ballot-box stuffing can be brazen. In Chihuahua during a hard-fought race for governor in 1986, PRI sympathizers entered polling stations before the official opening time and filled ballot barrels with marked ballots.

At other voting places, opposition poll watchers were turned away or ejected; as voters entered, they found the ballot boxes full. In some precincts, PRI workers handed out voting credentials to all comers even after the polls opened. PRI officials in Chihuahua characterized such incidents as isolated.

Even before the polls open, the PRI enjoys vast advantages over its opposition. Government services are dispensed in the name of the PRI. Last fall, coupons designed to allow impoverished consumers to buy cut-price tortillas carried PRI propaganda. Whole families were enlisted into the party during the registration period for the coupons.

Party Budget Not Published

The PRI’s budget is never published. The money spent on campaigns reportedly comes out of government coffers and the war chests of its affiliated unions, many of which receive government subsidies and whose members work for state-owned companies. The PRI uses government transport to carry its candidate from coast to coast. Security is provided by the Mexican army.

Salinas says that the PRI reimburses the government for every service it uses. As for the military, the candidate says the soldiers are volunteers on leave.

Media Coverage Varies

Another area in which the critics of the PRI say the ruling party has an unfair advantage is the media.

Outlets of campaign news are watched closely by the government. The Ministry of the Interior arranges the relative amount of newspaper coverage for the candidates. Reporters covering each of the five candidates check in with ministry representatives at each campaign stop, local journalists say. “They tell us what subjects to avoid,” one explained.

Reporters receive free room and board on the campaign trail; telephone service is gratis. Traditionally in Mexico, reporters are paid extra money by the government ministries that they cover, and the same holds true for the PRI campaign. According to the magazine Proceso, lead reporters covering the beginning of Salinas’ campaign in Monterrey received about $200 in cash from the state government for the one-day visit. In the northern state of Tamualipas, they received $300; in Oaxaca, $500. Over the course of the eight-month campaign, the sum of such payments runs into thousands of dollars, reporters say.

Placement Reflects Bias

Opposition campaigns receive front-page coverage in most newspapers, although the placement of stories on the page reflects a clear bias toward the PRI. First, all opposition parties are treated as equally inferior. The minuscule campaign of the right-wing Mexican Democratic Party is often given the same weight as Cardenas’ surprisingly strong campaign.

Moreover, exceptional displays of support for the opposition are often belittled in the press. A recent unprecedented turnout of supporters of Clouthier, the National Action Party candidate, along 10 miles of Insurgentes Avenue in Mexico City was generally scorned as unimpressive by the capital’s newspapers.

On the other hand, opposition leaders can expect heavy coverage if their campaign appears to be skidding. Last week, the influential newspaper Excelsior published a banner headline introducing an account of an interview with Luis H. Alvarez, president of the National Action Party, in which he supposedly admitted that his party would lose July 6. It turned out that he had said nothing of the sort. After complaints from Alvarez, Excelsior printed the entire interview without explanation.

PRI Dominates Television

Television, a powerful medium because it reaches even the illiterate, is dominated by the PRI. Salinas’ major speeches are covered live. News broadcasts, both on the private and government-owned stations, are dominated by news from his campaign. Sometimes, a 30-minute broadcast will feature a 15-minute account of Salinas’ activities.

Spokesmen for Televisa, the powerful privately owned station, say that because the PRI is the country’s biggest party, it deserves the lion’s share of coverage.

Electoral fraud is as old as the PRI itself and grows out of the party’s traditional view of elections. The vote, according to PRI dogma, is not a contest among parties with an equal chance to win but mere confirmation of the PRI’s rule over Mexico.

Describing the formative years of the PRI, analyst Meyer wrote: “In no moment did the party demonstrate a disposition that the ballot box could put in doubt its right to govern.”

Always a Big Vote

Thus, even when the PRI runs unopposed, a big vote is habitually in order, by hook or crook.

“No public official, no matter how insignificant, wants to be responsible for a low PRI vote,” said Samuel del Villar, a former adviser to President Miguel de la Madrid.

Former “alchemist” Reyes put it another way: “No matter what the situation, we wanted to show we were the absolute majority.”

Inflated votes could prove a windfall for impoverished villages. Eufemio explained: “We felt that obtaining maximum votes for the PRI would translate into more water wells, more electrical service, more of something.”

Sometimes, the payoff comes even before election day. In San Jeronimo, the PRI municipal government has just shipped in a load of cinder blocks and cement to rebuild the crumbling wall of the local cemetery.

Reyes insists it will not work; townsfolk want the PRI out, wall or no.

“Of course, the dead might appreciate it. Some of them vote, too,” he said with a wink.