Irregularities

Manuel Andres Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has continued the exercise of his popularity in recent days, stretching his supporters across the doorways of banks, occupying toll boths on highways and permitting drivers to pass through without rendering tithe.

Our post on the mayor of Mexico City Aug. 7 made clear that control of the municipal police by AMLO's Revolutionary Democratic Party had permitted the creation of an anarchic temporary autonomous zone, the kind which highwayscribery would like to turn the whole world into.

When Obrador's request for a vote-by-vote recount was denied by a federal tribunal, he took his street actions up a notch, out of Mexico City's historic core and across the country. From here the efficiency of that effort cannot be measured, but its resonance, or lack thereof, is most important to goings on in that tense country.

Meanwhile, judges from the federal government were dispatched to different polling stations outlined by the court with authority over the elections.

If reports from the left-wing, pro-Obrador "La Jornada" are any indication, the partial recount ordered has revealed a rather high incidence of tampering and irregulaties.

From what the highway scribe can determine, votes are counted and placed in packages or, paquetes, with the tally recorded on a label binding them. Lopez Obrador has contended that the figures on the labels are incorrect and that the paquetes should be opened and their contents verified.

According to the report, the seals on packets in the test voting districts have been broken, evidence of vote tampering.

Obrador's street tactics are bordering on militia-like and paramilitary; he seems convinced that only this kind of pressure can lead to a proper accounting of the election.

The opposition and everyone else say he's threatening Mexico's democracy.

They should open the packets and count those votes once more. That's what they're saving them for. Then Lopez Obrador can shut up and go home, put in his place by the undeniable evidence of that same Mexican democracy.