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Summary Pena Nieto got about 3.3 million more votes than his closest rival in Mexico presidential election.
The official count in Mexicos presidential election concluded Friday with results showing that presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto got about 3.3 million more votes than his closest rival, giving him a 6.6 percent lead in the former ruling partys bid to regain power.The count by the countrys electoral authority, which included a ballot-by-ballot recount at more than half of polling places, showed Pena Nieto getting 38.21 percent of votes. His top challenger, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, got 31.59 percent.The final count of the roughly 50.3 million valid ballots was almost exactly the same as the quick count released hours after the elections.Lopez Obrador said he will file a formal legal challenge to the vote count in electoral courts next week, based on the allegation that Pena Nietos Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, engaged in vote-buying that illegally tilted millions of votes. PRI officials deny the charge.Rivers of illicitly obtained money were used to buy millions of votes, Lopez Obrador told a news conference Friday. He also claimed that the recount of ballots at over half of polling places had not been carried out as thoroughly as promised.Josefina Vazquez Mota of the conservative National Action Party got 25.41 percent of votes cast in Sundays elections, and the small New Alliance Party got 2.29 percent, barely passing the two-percent barrier needed to preserve the partys place on future ballots.Almost 2.5 percent of ballots where voided; while some voters in Mexico void their ballots as a form of protest, some also simply make mistakes in marking them.The final vote count must be certified in September by the Federal Electoral Tribunal. The tribunal has declined to overturn previously contested elections, including a 2006 presidential vote that was far closer than Sundays.Accusations of vote-buying began surfacing in June, but sharpened early this week as thousands of people rushed to grocery stores on the outskirts of Mexico City to redeem pre-paid gift cards worth about 100 pesos ($7.50). Many said they got the cards from PRI supporters before Sundays elections.Lopez Obrador said millions of voters had received either pre-paid cards, cash, groceries, construction materials or appliances. Lopez Obrador would not rule out street protests, like the one he led in 2006 to protest alleged fraud in the presidential elections of that year, which he narrowly lost to President Felipe Calderon.But he said Thursday that his challenge of the results would be channeled through legal venues, like the electoral institute and courts.
