American Enterprise Institute

March 26, 2007

[Edited transcript from audio tapes]

10:15 a.m.	Registration
10:30	Introduction:	Norman J. Ornstein, AEI
	Keynote Speaker:	Luis Carlos Ugalde, Mexican Federal Electoral Institute
	Discussant:	Robert Pastor, American University
Noon	Adjournment

Proceedings:

Norman Ornstein:  Thank you all for coming.  I’m Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, representing the Joint AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project.  We also, of course, have Tom Mann of Brookings and John Fortier of AEI here. 

When Mexico had its election last year, for Americans who have been through 2000 it was déjà vu all over again in many respects.  A close contest with significant controversy that could have easily become a much more difficult and serious problem of dispute than it did.  And it did not get worse because of the integrity and strong international reputation of the Mexican Federal Electoral Institute. 

We are delighted to have with us Luis Carlos Ugalde, who is the president of that institute as he has been now for more than three years and, of course, also has a distinguished academic career spanning Mexico and the United States with a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University and a career in government and diplomacy as well, serving in the Department of Energy and at the embassy here in the United States.  So he will talk to us about the Mexican election, lessons to be learned from it and prospects for the future, things that I believe and hope we can take to heart, as well, because there are many things we can learn from the way elections are handled in other countries, and Mexico is a particularly good example. 

After Luis Carlos speaks, we will hear from Bob Pastor, who has his own quite wide-ranging and distinguished career with a particular interest in, and expertise in, all of North America, including both Mexico and the United States.  He is the vice-president of International Affairs and a professor of International Relations at American University now, after a career in government at the Carter Center and with expertise and interest not only in foreign policy - he was President Carter’s National Security Adviser on Latin American affairs - but also a deep involvement on elections, including both commissions after the 2000 election, the Carter-Ford Commission and the more recent Carter-Baker Commission.  So we could not do better than the two people we have got here.  Luis Carlos Ugalde?

Luis Carlos Ugalde:  Good morning to all of you.  Thank you for the invitation and for the opportunity to discuss openly after eight months after Election Day what happened during 2006 in Mexico because, as the presenter said, Mexico’s electoral system has been lauded internationally for many years as one of the models to follow, given that that system was built after many decades in which Mexican elections were accused of being fraudulent. 

And being a very sound system, controversies, disputes aroused after Election Day and continued for many weeks in Mexico; and, therefore, if the Mexican system is a sound system, a legal and transparent model after which many countries have built their own system, what happened in Mexico in 2006?  I think it is important to discuss and to assess what happened and what needs to be done in the future.  So today I would like to have some discussion on eight issues.

 The first lesson I would say is that you can always count on citizens to organize clean elections.  And as I will argue, I think this is the strongest attribute of the Mexican system that it is citizens who organize the election. 

The second lesson that I think we need to review is that IFE confirmed its technical expertise on elections management.  The third lesson I want to discuss with you is that election, as [sounds like] current international observers and Mexicans alike, was a transparent and legal election.  The fourth idea I would like to talk with you is that previous political conflict shaped the post-electoral scenario and incentives for outcome acceptance.  In this regard, I want to discuss with you how attitudes are very much shaped and incentives by the context in which elections occur. 

The fifth idea is that the close result plus fraud allegations is a difficult combination for any democracy.  It is a common idea and a common sight in international circles that the worst can happen on electoral authority is that the position -- the [indiscernible] government wins by a very close margin, or put it in different words, the best for an electoral authority is that the opposition wins by a wide margin and that is precisely what did not happen in Mexico in 2006.  And what did happen in 2000 was Vicente Fox, the opposition candidate, won by a wide margin. 

The sixth idea is that in 2006 despite allegations on the contrary, candidates ran under more equal conditions than ever, especially regarding access to the media and news treatment. 

The seventh idea is that one of the dilemmas that the IFE faced is that we had new problems but old rules to deal with them, and that presents several dilemmas and several problems that we faced in Mexico last year. 

And finally, for the future, for electoral reform in Mexico we need to think globally and intellectually and conceptually what type of democracy do we want for the future.  So let me go one by one.  First and most importantly is that in Mexico, what makes our system impartial, neutral and sound is that it is citizens who organize the election.  In Mexico, citizens are selected by lot, randomly selected; we train about a million Mexicans.  It is that your duty in the USA and that million Mexicans are trained in the weeks before election so that those citizens are precisely those who act as poll workers on Election Day. 

It is not voluntary.  We make a lottery in the month of January based on a month of the calendar and based on a letter from the alphabet.  And based on those two variables – a month and a letter of the alphabet - we randomly select a million Mexicans.  We train them, and on Election Day we have about half-a-million of them who open the polling stations, receive the votes on the day.  And at the end of the day those half-a-million Mexicans are the ones that count the votes, fill out the tally sheets and finally provide the information with which the IFE provides final results. 

So it means that if you select by random a million Mexicans and train them, probably, these Mexicans and these humans and these people may make some mistakes in counting the votes and in filling out tally sheets as it happened in Mexico; it happens in any country in the world.  But those Mexicans randomly selected make [sounds like] that the system is neutral and impartial in how you conduct elections. 

So in 2006 we opened more than 103,000 polling places all across Mexico.  We also had citizens who act as supervisors at state level and district level electoral councils; 2000 Mexicans act as observers.  In 2006 we also had electoral observers, 25,000 Mexican observers who at the end of the day concluded that the election had been transparent and legal and fair.  Let me tell you that of those half-a-million poll workers that acted as polling officials on Election Day, not a single of them did announce any irregularity or mismanagement of the electoral process.  Not a single of them came out and said, “I did some wrong,” or “I saw something irregular on Election Day.” 

So I would say that the best way to prove that the Mexican election was transparent and legal [sounds like] is that half a million Mexicans on Election Day randomly selected; not a single of them came out to denounce any irregularity in anything.  That is the best proof that the Mexican election last year was a clean and fair one. 

Second idea is that IFE after 15 years in existence has proved to be an expert and professional body.  Before saying that, let me share with you that the Mexican Electoral Institute is a civil service body; people that carry out the election management on Election Day in the field are the same ones that did that in 2000, in 1994.  They are civil servants, which means that, A, they have the experience and expertise to do that; and second, they have no incentives whatsoever to do things differently than according to law.  And I think this is one of the strengths of the Mexican system, that it is based on civil servants that do that in the best way possible. 

For 2006 to provide you, we have most polling stations installed; only 11 polling stations out of more than 130,000 could not be installed for climate conditions that were beyond IFE’s control.  But this is the best figure in IFE’s history - only 11 polling stations could not be installed on Election Day.  Second, we had electoral ballots and documents produced with top anti-counterfeit technology. 

I would say that IFE has one of the best documents in the world of those that I have been able to know.  We have voter ID cards; we have more than 71 million voter ID cards.  Indeed, IFE’s voting ID cards have become so successful and so confident for Mexicans that it would have become the identifiers of Mexicans, not only for electoral processes but also for any type of financial or any type of transaction in the Mexican system. 

IFE not only provides ID cards for voters but, indeed, ID cards for any type of transaction in Mexico.  We have other types of mechanisms to control and to make impossible to make any type of double voting, like especially to prevent duplicate voting on Election Day.  Electoral results that were made public by IFE worked well despite some allegations, and I will talk about that later.  We did that quick count on election night.  We have our preliminary election results program known as PREP, and we have a district-level tally sheet count that occurs a few days after Election Day.  And all of them as you can see here were very much aligned as never before. 

The quick count made by IFE in a very large sample on Election Day showed that the two leading candidates were so close within the margin of error; the margin of error of IFE’s quick count was plus/minus 0.3 percent.  As you can see, it is impossible to go closer than that margin of error.  However, the preciseness of that quick count -- the margin was so close that it was too close to call on Election Night.  And we could not provide results but the preliminary results provided by IFE 24 hours after election showed a difference between both candidates of 0.62 percent. 

Then the following Wednesday we had a precise tally sheet count at the district level that provided a very, very similar feel, 0.58 percent.  And after the Electoral Court order of partial recount of votes, the difference was almost the same - 0.56 percent of the vote.  So you can see that all results provided by IFE and the Electoral Court are very, very, very much aligned and very similar among them.  If you could see - and I do not have it here - the results provided by private polling firms, you will see that most of them, with the exception of one, provided basically the same results. 

Now, the transparency of the election.  We have as I mentioned more than 25,000 Mexican observers.  In addition to that, we have party representatives in each polling station.  We have 400,000 party representatives in each polling station, so you have a polling place with citizens randomly selected acting as poll workers, four per polling place; you have one party representative per polling place and we also have almost 700 international observers; one of them, Mr. Robert Pastor, who is here with us. 

And as you can see, these are some of the conclusions that [indiscernible] said that our electoral role is one of the most safe and reliable in the world.  The United Nations concluded that the process to randomly select poll workers among citizens ensures total impartiality.  The European Union said that Election Day was held in an orderly and peaceful manner.  This is very important, very important to mention. 

If you review what the Mexican citizenry saw and experienced on Election Day, it was a peaceful day.  No incidents were reported on that day.  No political party during the day claimed that something wrong was happening across the country.  So the assessment and evaluation of Election Day -- during the Election Day was that it was a civic exercise conducted in a peaceful manner across the country. 

Things began to change at 11 pm on that day, but the assessment before that time was that it was a very clean and peaceful civic exercise all across Mexico.  However - and this is not something new in the world; it has happened in many nations - political context matters and matters a lot.  IFE, when the process began in January 2006, would have had in Mexico a long process of increasing political polarization in Mexico that, of course, affects the way campaigns are conducted. 

To remind you -- for those of you that have followed Mexican politics over the past few years, in 2004 there was a process, an impeachment process against one of the leading candidates at that time, Mr. Lopez Obrador.  And that impeachment process in 2004 created a perception that things were not going well, that there was political polarization, and that fact, among others -- the battle between key political actors in Mexico, including former President Vicente Fox, created a perception and a context of political conflict that created polarization before and during the campaigns.  However, that means that the more conflicting the political context, the less likely players will abide by the outcome if that outcome does not provide them with the winning situation; and voters, of course, are affected by those perceptions. 

Here I want to underline what some academics in the US have recently said; in a recent edition of the Journal of Political Science from the American Political Science Association, in which they analyzed attitudes towards elections outcome.  And they say that the political context changes attitudes and strategies after the outcome is known.  That explains why, once the outcome was known, some attitudes and strategies were changed, and, therefore, that may explain as in any other democracy how party leadership reacts to the outcome when campaigns are carried out in a context of political conflict as happened in Mexico. 

And this is influenced very much by the margin.  Here, margin does matter.  You can see how margin has changed in Mexico over the past few elections.  And, of course, in 2000 as I mentioned, the winning candidate Vicente Fox won by six percent; that is more than six percentage points, and we have a very different outcome in 2006.  Let’s imagine just for counter-factual analysis, what would have happened in Mexico in 2000 if the party in government at the time, the PRI and its candidate Francisco Labastida had won by 0.56 percent as happened in 2006 with the prime candidates. 

Harry Febin [phonetic] assessed as the leading democratic institution in Mexico as it was at the time or have public assessment and political attitudes towards the result had been different.  Let me remind you that in 2000, then-candidate Vicente Fox had openly said that had he not won by a margin of 10 percentage plus points, he would not recognize the result.  He said that weeks before Election Day - 10 percentage points; he won by six and he accepted the outcome, of course.  And then losing candidate Francisco Labastida from the PRI came out and recognized the results.  However, what happened in that margin of 2006 had been in place in 2000, or otherwise -- put it otherwise, if the opposition candidate Lopez Obrador had won last year by six percentage points, probably things would have been completely different under the same circumstances.  Put it differently, the procedures and the people that organized this election are the same procedures and the same people that did that in 2000. 

However, the attitudes and the strategies after election were very different and, in my opinion and according to international experience, that is explained partially by the margin.  Let’s see if margins internationally over the past few years -- Costa Rica, 2006, more than a percentage point.  This is dreamland for Mexico now.  This is paradise, one percentage point.  The USA in 2000 -- Germany, Mexico, Taiwan and Italy --  some recent experience shows some type of trend; there were very close elections and, of course, Mexico falls in one of the worst cases anywhere in the world. 

And margins sometimes-- incentive allegations of irregularities-- it is not that the margin is the reflection of regularities; it is that the margin provides some type of justification or explanation or hypothesis that if that margin is so close, probably some sort of irregularities could have happened that could reverse the result.  Again, it is not that the margin explains -- it is explained by the irregularities, but that the margin provides justification or incentives for losers to claim some sort of irregularities because, given the margin, results can be reversed.

And Costa Rica a long time lauded democracy in Central America; there were allegations of irregularities, legal actions by the second place.  The Electoral Court ordered a full vote recount as the law provided and at the end, the second place accepted defeat.  Germany [indiscernible] and a coalition government was formed.  Let’s see what would have happened in Germany had the law did not provide for a coalition government; or if the system were different, what would have happened in Germany in 2005 if there was a presidential system like Mexico’s in which coalition government are not provided by law. 

So here, the rules matter to try to diffuse controversies after very close contests.  Italy, you are aware of that; allegations of fraud by the Prime Minister; full vote recount demanded; partial recount; the Supreme Court confirms result and at the end, the second place accepted defeat after weeks of political conflict.  Taiwan, allegations of electoral fraud; legal actions and demonstrations led by the second place; full vote recount and recount confirmed results after conflict again. 

In Mexico, allegations of electoral fraud; legal actions and mass rallies on the streets; partial vote recount; at the end the final results by the Electoral Court confirmed [indiscernible] results both political conflict aroused and still exist today in Mexico.  This gives an idea that, regardless of the type of democracy, regardless of the type of system of government, close margins, thin race margins provide room for political strategies, political conflict in all countries across the world. 

Now let me share with you about the treatment on news coverage because this is a very important element to analyze whether not only was Election Day transparent and legal, but how were conditions of political campaigning before Election Day.  And in this regard I could say that according to figures, there are some elements to conclude that there was a fair treatment on news coverage. 

In Mexico, we have only two major TV networks in Mexico; and one of the demands and one of the allegations of political parties, especially those from the opposition is always that the treatment is not equal, therefore, they have less access to voters and that can preclude a fair election.  Here for the first time in Mexican elections the IFE tracked major TV and radio newscasts transmitted day by day, hour by hour, 24 hours a day for more than five months.  And you can see here how many millions of seconds did each candidate receive.  The candidate Lopez Obrador was the one with the most coverage in the Mexican election but, in general, you can see that the three leading candidates, all of them received sufficient access to news treatment.  And there is an additional tracking that is not shown here that not only do we track the number of seconds by each candidate on news coverage but also the type of treatment.  If it was positive, if it was negative, if it was neutral and the conclusion is that more than 90 percent of the treatment was neutral and three, four percent positive and negative, and it was equal to all candidates. 

In the US, you would say “What are you doing this?”  You have free media.  They may have the possibility not only of having the treatment they want but, indeed, having pronouncements supporting candidates as you have here in the US.  Well, in Mexico we have a different industry structure.  As I said, we have a duopoly - only two major TV networks - and that makes political parties very sensitive to the way they are treated by major news programs.  And that is why IFE has to do this tracking just to have the opportunity to show if the election process was fair according to access to news coverage. 

A second thing we did was to measure how many TV ads were bought by major political parties.  And again, we tracked more than 2.5 million hours, more than 750,000 political ads transmitted for more than five months; we have that database. And here you say you have, for example, in the case of TV ads how many of them were transmitted and bought by each political party in seconds.  And you can see that at least the three leading candidates - Lopez Obrador, Felipe Calderon and Roberto Madrazo - all of them had sufficient TV in air and in seconds; again, they had a lot to show to the people.  So from this perspective nobody can claim that there was an unequal treatment on news coverage nor unequal access to paid TV advertisements. 

Now, I would say that the controversy on the Mexican election did not arise from the fact that something happened on Election Day as I have shown to you.  International observers and Mexicans alike have said and concluded that the Mexican election on Election Day was clean.  But before Election Day, however equal according to my numbers the election and the process was, there was a controversy because we faced new problems that had to be dealt with old rules.  And I think this gap between what reality has as new phenomena and what the Mexican law provides to deal with that phenomenon, this gap explains part of the controversy of our political process last year. 

First, political advertising and activism prior to legal campaign period, what is known as pre-campaigns.   In this idea let me tell you that primaries in the US are common occurrence.  For you, you are already in the pre-primary season already and nobody would be discontent or worried about that fact; it is part of your democracy.  But in Mexico, these are new phenomena, pre-campaigns or pre-pre-campaigns, and the Mexican Electoral Code does not provide any regulation for that type of phenomena.  This is something new and only some years in existence, and primary seasons, pre-primary seasons, pre-primary advertising on TV is not regulated. 

And many people in Mexico conceded that pre-campaigns provide an opportunity for inequality because financing is not regulated, because there is no transparency for political pre-candidates to pay for that advertising because some government officials may use their position, their resources of office to try to promote themselves as it happens in this country and in many European countries.  But in Mexico this new phenomenon and the Mexican law does not provide ways to regulate that type of phenomenon, and this happened in 2006.  And, therefore, the Mexican law does not provide keys to that. 

The second one is negative campaigning.  Negative campaigning is a common occurrence in the US.  It is part of your system but in Mexico we for the first time had this phenomenon as a key strategy of political parties and candidates.  And this was, again, a new phenomenon that the Mexican law does not provide clues as to how to deal with that.  You could say negative campaigning is part of the democratic process.  Of course, it is a common occurrence in many countries but the fact that this is new in Mexico and that we have not had time to discuss whether this is democratic, is inevitably part of democracy, should be forbidden, for example.  We need to discuss that in order to have a clear idea what to do with this. 

There is the issue of issue and political advertising by business, organizations and unions.  Again, this is common in the US and in many European countries but in Mexico this was a new phenomenon that created some sort of controversy on many sides.  It is the issue of the political activism of the president, state governors and other public servants.  Again, for you, this is very strange to hear from this.  In a reelection country as yours, this is part of the political landscape that the president openly campaigns for himself or for his successor in case he cannot reelect again.  But in Mexico you do not have reelection; one of the few countries in the world where reelection is forbidden.

And, second, coming from a system of a hegemonic party of many decades, it is common that one of the main issues by which the Mexican system was built during the 1990s was precisely how to level the playing field, given that the government at the time, led by the PRI had so many resources, some of them illegally, to provide or to transfer to the party in power.  And that created in Mexico the idea that you have to level the playing field, sometimes forbidding government officials from openly campaigning.  And this was, again, one of the main discussions during the last year but the point is that the Mexican law does not regulate. 

For example, in Mexico, the Mexican Electoral Code forbids government officials, including the president, from transferring public funds to political campaigns; that is obvious and is forbidden by law.  But the Mexican law by no means forbids or prohibits the President from openly providing political support to the candidate of his party; the Mexican law does not have that kind of prohibition.  However, the Mexican President comes out and openly supports or implicitly supports his candidate that creates a political discussion.  However, the legal code in Mexico has no restriction to that attitude and in Mexico that happened last year.  The President, some state governors, some government officials from all political parties came out to support, to talk about the election and that created a lot of strain during the election process. 

And finally, the thing about campaign spending limits that I will discuss in a few seconds.  This is how, for example, the issue of negative advertising and negative campaigning is in the world.  In some select cases in the US, that is an implicit part of your system, the First Amendment.  In Brazil, negative campaigning is banned.  In France, it is implicitly banned, as all media advertising is banned.  But in Mexico it is unclear, because the Mexican law prohibits defamation. 

But how can you prove that a negative ad is defamation or is part of how you can provide information to voters regarding the character of the opposing candidate, for example?  What is the limit and the boundary between showing your character and the other candidate’s character and making defamation?  It is not clear.  And this lack of clearness about what constitutes negative advertising and when this can become defamation and therefore prohibited by law is not clear in the Mexican law. 

The topic of issue advertising, again, was one of the sources of controversy during the campaigns.  Not only did a group of business organizations in Mexico came out with some ads talking about the future of Mexico and the need to keep economic stability; those ads aired by the most important business organization in Mexico, aired ten days before Election Day, talked about the need to maintain economic stability in the country.  They were not explicitly political or electoral in nature and, therefore, for some people they did not constitute any type of infraction of the Mexican law. 

However, politically speaking, the message was clear for many and, therefore, many said that those ads of these business organizations were distorting the conditions of the campaign in favor of one candidate and against another candidate.  However, it is unclear.  It is unclear because the same happens with unions and other citizen organizations.  And as you can see, there is a tendency in the world to ban those type of issue advertising, even in the US with the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act; and here again, we need to clarify that in the Mexican law. 

When they think about office holders' activism, it depends.  I would say that the tendency in the world is to allow for government officials and office holders to support political speaking once they are forbidden from transferring funds to express their ideas.  In Mexico, there is the political view that that activism should be forbidden but the Mexican code does not provide clear rules to do that.  Not only that, I would say we need to disclose that if that can be done and if that is something good for Mexico's democracy, but at the time we have the gap that the Mexican law does not provide for those type of expressions.  And at the same time, there is a political demand-- some political demands arguing that that type of participation should be forbidden. 

As for spending limits, we have in Mexico US$60 million per candidate.  That gives you an idea of how much money was spent during the last election.  For many, this is a very expensive exercise.  It is not the most expensive as many argue in Mexico; of course not.  But certainly Mexicans express skepticism as to the type and the quality of democracy that we are having with such an investment, especially given the economic conditions of the Mexican people.  Let me tell you that at this time as we talk, the IFE is concluding the auditing of the 2006 campaigns, which we will make public on next May 21st.  And at that time, we will have a better idea of what happened with spending during the election of last year. 

Finally, let me talk about the future.  And to talk about the future we need to assess what happened during 2006.  Let me review what I have already discussed with you.  I think, and evidence provides, that information and the facts and the international observers have concluded that it was a free and fair election, similar and in some respects better-organized than the 2000 elections when Mexico was lauded internationally as an example of a peaceful transition towards democracy. 

This election was organized with the same procedures and the same standards and in many respects with better results than the 2000 elections.  So, I think, it is fair to say that it was a free and legal election.  Second as I just mentioned, the novelty probably that we faced new problems to be dealt with old rules.  And this gap, I would say, should be the source to assess and to think when it is to be done in the future with respect to our reform.  Third idea I mentioned is that margin does matter and partially explains post-electoral conflict.  It is not that margin provides evidence or clue of irregularities.  On the contrary, margin explains that the type of justification that party leaders can do once they know the outcome.  That is why I have mentioned that it is very important to contrast the assessment of election during the election day and previous to that election day on the part of all political parties.  With that attitude and the assessment of the Election Day after Election Day, it is completely different.  And I think this helps to explain and to prove that margin does matter and provides stimulus for political actors to react to the outcome once it is known.

And, finally, the future reform. I think that conceptually speaking, we need to think what type of democracy do we want?  Do we want to walk into the direction of a liberal model in which the citizen's freedom to choose and the liberty is the most important goal to be achieved?  Or do we want to follow the route of a regulatory model in which equity and leveling the playing field is the most important factor? 

I can tell you that Mexico has followed mostly the second model because, A, we come from a hegemonic party system in which leveling the playing field for a democracy to emerge and a competitive party system to emerge was one of the main goals.  And I think following that regulatory model was important and one of those results is precisely that now, we have a three-party system, a very competitive party system that would be difficult to achieve had we not had this type of regulatory model to deal with leveling the playing field. 

However, the question into the future is what type of model should we follow and what type of model is best to produce democracy with higher quality?  Because I can tell you, my opinion is that the system, the Mexican system is very sound, is very solid.  But I would say that for most Mexicans, it is not providing the type and the quality they want from parties and office holders and governments.  And I think, with that idea in mind we need to think the future.  Thank you very much.

Norman Ornstein:  Thank you so much for a very clear and concise description and explanation.  Before I turn to Bob, let me offer one small clarification and ask one question.  On the issue ads, the United States actually does not ban ads.  What we do is say that no corporate or union monies can be used for ads that target candidates in 60 days before an election.  We actually have a lot of ads.  They are just financed in a different way. 

The question I have is about your voter ID, which has, of course, become a very controversial issue here.  Seventy-one million of them.  How do you provide them to citizens?  Does the state go out and actually fairly aggressively seek out people and make sure they have cards?  Do you pay for them?  Is there any cost to the voters, and how much do they cost?

Luis Carlos Ugalde:  This is the Mexican voter ID card.  It was begun producing in 1991 and it is free, completely free.  Second, as this has become the official ID for Mexicans -- if you go to a bank, you will require this then there is a stimulus for any Mexican to have it.  Today, 96 percent of Mexican citizens, 96 percent have a voter ID card, which provides for a universal access to voting in Mexico.  Few countries -- I would say that probably no country in the world has this type of coverage of the voter ID card.  Well, it is produced.  Millions of them are produced yearly by IFE.

Norman Ornstein:  And what do they cost the [inaudible]?

Luis Carlos Ugalde:  How much they cost?  They absorb 40 of Mexico's –- of IFE's budget.  I would say that this year, for example, in 2007, this will cost about $150 million to produce about 10 million ID cards this year alone.

Norman J. Ornstein:  Thanks.  Bob?

Robert Pastor:  Thank you very much, Norman.  It is a delight to follow Luis Carlos Ugalde.  We are very fortunate in the world to have a great political scientist and a scholar who is also a policy-maker heading such a critical institution in our neighbor Mexico.  I would also like to acknowledge the presence not just of Tom Mann and John Fortier and Norm who organized this but of the new Ambassador of Mexico to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, a distinguished diplomat who also served as the senior foreign policy adviser to Felipe Calderon during the campaign.  We are very lucky to have him, and Paul DeGregorio who has just stepped down from the Election Assistance Commission of the United States where he has played such a key role. 

My experience with elections really began in Mexico in 1986, and I have observed six elections in Mexico since then.  They started my experience in observing US elections, started in 1992 and I have also observed six elections since then and organized the observation of elections.  And I saw the trajectories of the two countries cross in the year 2000 when I was invited first by President Zedillo and Vicente Fox to organize an observation of elections that included Jimmy Carter as the leader of a very small group, and also Charles Krause who has just come here as part of that small group.

And then also observed the elections in the United States, and of course, something very interesting occurred in the year 2000 for which not many Americans were aware of.  And that was that international observers decided that the elections in Mexico were free and fair but they reached a different conclusion with regard to the United States.  And this should have led both countries and the world to draw two conclusions. 

The first conclusion is that -- or third -- authoritarian, fraudulent electoral system that Mexico had for most of this century was capable of being transformed into one of the freest and most respected electoral institutions in the country.  Indeed, in my first observation of election in 1986 in Chihuahua, I can honestly say that I saw the most fraudulent election that I have ever witnessed anywhere in the world, and I have observed elections in over 30 different countries. 

Indeed I learned in Chihuahua most of the techniques that I would ever be able to witness of how to make an election fraudulent.  So, for that I'm deeply grateful to Mexico.  Since then, I watched as Mexico began this twelve-year journey from the most fraudulent electoral system in the Americas, perhaps in the world, to a new system that was so widely acknowledged, with good reason, to be one of the best in the world by the year 2000. 

Similarly, the second lesson to be drawn from the two elections in 2000 is even the most democratic country that had held elections on a continuing basis under a constitution longer than any other country in the world was capable of sliding backwards to an electoral system so deeply flawed that it brought into jeopardy the very democracy that existed in the United States. 

The election in 2000 crystallized clearly what I had first witnessed in the election -- the first election I observed in the US in 1992.  And that is that the source of the problem in the United States was a decentralized system that had become so decentralized as to become dysfunctional; that there is not one election for the president in the United States, there are actually 13,000 elections representing different counties and municipalities. 

The Founding Fathers had originally envisaged an electoral system that would be run by the states.  There was no federal system for elections.  But the states had devolved authority to the counties and municipalities and each county and municipality did it very differently.  And indeed, as I have learned over time, very often different precincts in each county and municipality do it differently as well.  So, this was what had I witnessed in the two systems. 

Based on that, we held a conference at American University where I direct the Center for Democracy and Election Management in 2004 where we explicitly looked at the three electoral systems in North America:  in Canada, the US and Mexico.  We published a volume in the Election Law Journal, which was translated into Spanish by the Tribunal in Mexico and asked the basic question, “What is it that we can learn from our neighbors?”  This is not something that comes easily to our three countries.  Indeed, in the Carter-Ford Commission that followed the election of 2000, we did have a panel that looked at questions of what we could learn from our neighbors and other international organizations, and then disposed of that question when we got down to writing the report. 

In the Carter-Baker Commission and its report on election reform in the United States, which is available if you are interested - I would be glad to give you copies of it - we did start that report by asking ourselves the question, “What lessons can we draw from the world,” and did draw several fundamental lessons in there.  Many of them apply to the Mexican elections. 

And what I would like to do now is draw six lessons from the Mexican election for the United States.  And then having lauded, as I will, the Mexican election system, say nonetheless, there are some serious flaws that Luis Carlos Ugalde did not quite mention that Mexico might want to take into account as it undergoes its own self-evaluation in the years ahead. 

The first lesson for the United States to draw from Mexico is the simplest but the single most important, which is Mexico has developed a highly professional, autonomous and impartial election system that is run at the national level and also at the state level with some degree of supervision by the national; perhaps not as much as may be needed, but nonetheless to a great degree of that.  The political parties can oversee, can watch, can observe the way in which the Federal Election Institute (IFE) manages these elections but it does not direct the elections.  This stands in very sharp contrast to the electoral system in the United States.  Technically, it is run by the states and in most cases - that is to say, at least 38 of the 50 states - the Secretary of State, a partisan operative who often seeks the highest office in the state as governor, that partisan Secretary of State is mainly responsible for the elections. 

But at the county level, very often, you have a bipartisan or partisan electoral system; not a non-partisan system.  Indeed, the question is often asked in the United States, “Non-partisan is impossible.”  Well, of course, the answer in Mexico, in Canada, in most of the countries that have managed independent national election commissions is that it is not only possible but it exists.  Somehow, or rather, the United States is utterly incapable of recognizing that you can come up with a nonpartisan system.

And it is not hard from a technical standpoint.  You need just two things.  First is you need to set a standard that, in fact, the electoral system should be managed by an independent and nonpartisan player.  And secondly, you need an appointment and confirmation process that increases the likelihood that that person is viewed as nonpartisan.  And in the Carter-Baker report, we recommend a super majority - three-quarters or two-thirds of the state legislature - should be responsible for confirming that person.  And as long as it is that high, the probability is that you can find somebody who is above party politics and, therefore, allows the system to be run in a way that everybody views as free and fair. 

The second lesson is on poll workers.  I once interviewed a county election official in Georgia as to how they choose poll workers, and in that case they said, “We take anybody who walks in the door who has a pulse.”  And, of course, in many cases it is barely a pulse because most of the average age of the poll workers in the United States is over 70 years old.  And their ability to make it through a 14- or a 16-hour day and get to the end of the day and count is very, very trying, to say the least. 

And the EAC has now taken some steps to encourage a new generation to get involved.  Indeed, at American University we trained a hundred poll workers for the DC government.  But this is not really being done on a systematic way.  I think Mexico does offer a lesson there, as well, by looking at poll work, conducting the polls as a civic obligation, as like jury duty in which they bring people up on a random basis.  As many as 7.2 million people were recruited from which 913,000 were chosen as among the best poll workers. 

This is doubly good, not only because it provides young and other poll workers with some degree of competence and training but, more importantly, it educates the citizenry on how to conduct an election over time.  And we have found in many of these studies that one of the reasons people do not vote is because they are not really sure how to do it properly and they are too embarrassed to ask.  And as many teachers know, the best way to learn often is to teach and, therefore, considering poll workers to be trained as a result of being called up like jury duty is a good lesson for us to consider. 

The third major lesson is on voter registration and identification card system.  We have in the United States one of the worst voter registration systems in the world -- not the worst; the worst right now is in Nigeria as far as I can tell, although even the Nigerians do not know that but that is for another conference; they will learn it in a few weeks.  In Mexico, they have one of the best and as Norm correctly asked, they have a very activist system to go out and register as many as 96 percent of eligible citizens.  They provide a biometric, state-of-the-art counterfeit-free card. 

In the United States, of course, we are arguing over identification card system.  There are people who argue the US is not capable of doing an identification card system or it would be so intrusive and it would be abuse of civil liberties in the United States.  Well, in the case of Mexico, they learned that people after they got the cards loved the cards, use it for everything; it has become, in effect, a de facto national ID card system.  And their voter registration and ID together virtually guarantee that there is no possibility of double voting because the registration list itself has the photo on it of all of the voters that, of course, corresponds to the biometric and state-of-the-art ID card. 

Now, there is another reason why the US could do it, which is it was the US that helped Mexico do it; specifically, IBM and Xerox were contracted at a cost of $750 million in the early 1990s to do it for Mexico.  My guess is that they might be able to do it in the US.  But we are not doing it like that.  In fact, we are proceeding in at least 12 different paths to come up with at least 15 different kinds of ID systems, all of which are probably going to be inadequate, when all we would need is to do one and do it properly.  But we are not proceeding on those lines, even though I think they are compelling, both security, immigration as well as election reasons to try to do it properly.  It can be done and Mexico has shown it. 

The fourth area is campaign finance.  Here, Mexico has a public financing system which does provide equitable if not equal access to the major political parties.  And of course, this has proven to be very hard for the United States to consider.  The fifth area is on election day.  In the United States in the last two elections we monitored, Common Cause and other groups have fielded phone calls from American citizens asking simple questions like, “I do not know exactly where I am supposed to vote.  I went to my site and they say I'm not here.  Where should I go to vote?”  And of course, they then called up state county and municipal elections and found that they have received no answer on the telephone and no other way to answer their questions.  This is quite tragic in America. 

In Mexico, IFE has special teams that are sent out when there are problems at polling stations, when there are questions such as that to be answered.  We have nothing like that in the United States.   Secondly, I do not want to minimize the significance of what IFE did on election day.  The single most important act in my judgment that they did to keep a very delicate situation from becoming explosive was a comprehensive quick count. 

This was really quite extraordinary.  It was so systematic; it was so comprehensive with a margin mere of 0.3 percent.  That when Luis Carlos Ugalde at 11 PM on election night spoke and announced that quick count, the other 32 exit polls and quick counts all dissolved.  He said it was simply too close to call.  Well, of course, the parties themselves felt it was not and they tried to call it but they could not really supersede the effectiveness of that quick count.  Now, we do not have any organization in the United States that could even consider something like this, but the courage of that is so important that no other election commission that I know in a world has ever done anything along the lines that they did. 

In the United States however, we do have another problem, and that is our exit polls are not working, at least for the purpose of calling the final result for the presidential candidate.  But we have nothing else to rely on, which is why in the last two presidential elections, or certainly in 2000 there was a great deal of confusion sown as a result of that.  So, I think while we do not have an election organization, we do not have a federal election commission that supervises elections that does for campaign finance, I think this is something at least the media should consider.

The final lesson, I think, that could be thrown is on the judicial system.  As Rick Hasen pointed out, there is an increasing movement towards post-election litigation in the United States but there are no real election courts, and many of the judges who try election disputes, frankly, do not have the expertise.  In Mexico they have a separate electoral court with this clear set of procedures that came in to play in this last election; led to a partial recount of nine percent of the elections and also examined all of the other charges in a timely fashion that still allowed time for Mexico to have a transition before their inauguration on December 1st. 

Of course, in the United States as we learned in the year 2000 we do not have any system like that and in the end the Supreme Court preempted a full recount in the State of Florida, largely because they argued a lack of time.  So there is much that we can learn about electoral courts that we should consider.  Those are the main lessons.

Let me just very briefly identify a few problems in Mexico that I think were not developed by Luis Carlos but I think deserves some consideration.  First is Mexico tried a new system in this last election called “special polling stations.”  This was for citizens who were not in their polling districts.  They had done it before but in this case they had a system which made sure that they would not vote twice because they hooked into an electronic system.  These polling stations were so heavily used and so unprepared that there were long lines and a lot concerns that were raised.  I think it is an excellent system and I hope that IFE re-examines what went wrong in that system so that they could change it in the future. 

Secondly, on campaign financing.  It is not just that many people feel in Mexico that there is excessive campaign spending; it is the way law is written.  It almost encourages small parties to incorporate into political parties, sometimes families, because they can get a lot of additional funding from the government for doing that, and I think that clearly needs to be looked at. 

I think that the most important issue however was on the recount.  As some of you may know I argued and tried and tried to encourage both of the political parties to consider asking the tribunal to consider a full recount.  This was clearly within the area of what did the electoral court could have done even though they ultimately defined their role in very narrow legal terms as only considering those polling stations that were requested by individual candidates and where there was some disputes. 

But how do two political parties come forward and say let us do a full recount?  Or had it been required from an automatic stand point, which is the case in some states in the United States, I think it would have dispelled a considerable amount of suspicion that at least a third of the population had about the electoral outcome.  And, frankly, I think in the absence of that, there still considerable uncertainty about this that President Calderon has been able to overcome to a certain extent but not fully.  And indeed IFE itself was harmed by that failure to do a full recount. 

If you look at public opinion surveys in Mexico, many of which were done by IFE after the election, you will see sharp decline in the confidence level that Mexicans had about IFE.  On the eve of the election, two-thirds of the people had a very positive opinion of IFE; only six percent a negative view. After the election in September that number had dropped down to 51 percent positive, and the number with the negative view had climbed more than three times.  More importantly, when the question was asked, “Was the election fraudulent,” 50 percent of the Mexican people said no but 37 percent said yes, which is quite high and quite serious. 

I think President Calderon at the time right after the election raised a series of very legitimate and serious concerns of about what a full recount might do in terms of generating more chaos, more uncertainty.  But I think many of those concerns, if not all of them, could have been met.  And, indeed, in conversations that I had with the Lopez Obrador Group, were willing to meet them to assure that it would not only settle the election once and for all, that is to say, all of the other challenges that were weighed by Lopez Obrador would have been dismissed in favor of a simple decision with a full recount as to who won and who lost, with the loser conceding. 

My view is that would have confirmed the election result that we saw with Calderon winning but it would have had a doubly positive effect in re-assuring Mexicans that in fact the system did work.  And dispelling the doubts of that one third of the Mexican population who voted for Lopez Obrador and, perhaps, others who had some doubts that in fact the Mexican electoral system was a superb one, and one for which they could achieve some confidence. 

Just in conclusion, I think there is much that the United States can learn from Mexico that I hope that it does seriously consider.  And there is also more in terms of self evaluation that Mexico can learn from its own last election.  The most important conclusion to draw about democracy is it is nowhere perfect; it is always a work in progress.  It requires constant engagement, especially in the United States because we have not traveled far enough along the path towards a really good electoral system, but even also in Mexico, which has traveled.  Thank you.

Norman Ornstein:  Thanks so much, Bob.  Let see, Luis Carlos do you want to respond to any of that before we go to the floor?

Luis Carlos Ugalde:  Yes, absolutely.  Well, I am glad that Bob Pastor and I coincide in many respects about these trends of the Mexican system.  And I am glad to hear that the US can learn a lot from the Mexican system and I would like to comment on a few comments at the end.  First, it is true that being IFE, one of the institutions with the highest credibility in Mexico today, it is true that it was harmed.  But its level of confidence remain very high today despite the fact that they dropped to 51 percent.  A recent poll shows that it is about 60 percent today, which means that IFE even after the controversy of the election continues to be an institution of [indiscernible] with high levels of public confidence which makes it quite positive even after what happened. 

Second idea, is the fact that regarding the request for a full recount.  First idea is that this was in the hands of the electoral court, the tribunal electoral; it was not for IFE to decide or to comment on that.  IFE provided the official results after election but it was for the electoral court to decide on that. 

Third, I think it is important to distinguish between a legal request and a political demand.  This is very, very important because Robert Pastor mentioned in his remarks that Mexico has a professional and impartial system that it is precisely the fact that poll workers are citizens recruited from the population at large which makes the Mexican system completely impartial.  It is precisely this strength, the fact that this is citizens who count the votes following step by step that makes the system sound.  Therefore, in the Mexican electoral code the conditions for which you can request a recount are very precise and it is for political parties to make a request. 

Therefore, my opinion is that from a legal perspective and based on the facts, the whole process IFE results and the electoral court proceedings were followed precisely according to law and respecting how the election is carried out on Election Day.  However, in a very close election as I mentioned in my argument there is a room for political request and political demands, given the fact that the small margin sometimes provides room for perceptions different from reality, and therefore that is a political discussion. 

Many people argue that at the moment of such conflict you should have made a full recount because in that way you could have responded politically to political demand.  Other people consider that when you have a legal system that has worked so well, you need to follow legal rules and legal proceedings to respond to legal request and political request.  So, it is up to you to consider in the long term what would be best for Mexico; what the court did, which was basically to follow legal proceeding, which was follow [indiscernible], or to have made this type of political dealing with respect to the situation. 

I do not want to comment on the best.  I just want to say that the electoral authorities [indiscernible] the electoral  tribunal did what the Mexican law says we had to do.  And I want to say that this is probably one of the few times in recent Mexican history that through electoral bodies, through legal authorities, just do what the Mexican law says we needed to do despite the fact that the situation was so difficult.

And I would say this brings you a conclusion into the future.  I think that in very contested situations like this one, the Mexican law should provide more room to recounts, to provide more certainty to those perceptions that sometimes have some doubts about the results.  But the Mexican law did not provide that.  The electoral authority just had to follow what the code said.

Norman Ornstein:  Terrific, thanks.  Now, following our usual procedures we have microphones if you have questions and comments, and please identify yourselves.

Tova Wang:  Hi,  I am Tova Wang from The Century Foundation.  First of all, thank you so much for coming here.  I found the presentation really, really interesting.  I wanted to ask you more about the registration and ID system that you have.  How were you able to make sure that all Mexicans were registered to vote and got their voter ID cards, especially in poor and more rural communities where people may be harder to reach?  What does a person have to do in order to get an ID card?  Do they have to prove they live in a certain location?  And do you have any idea who is in this small percentage that does not have an ID card currently?

Luis Carlos Ugalde:  We have thousands of community and district level offices all across the country before an electoral process will open, hundreds of offices all across Mexico.  Six months before election day the registration process is closed in contrast to the US, in which you can get access to [indiscernible] even on the election day or that happens in Canada.  In many countries you can come to the polling booth and you can vote if you show any type of ID.  And in Mexico you need to close the system, the process, six months in advance because, A, you need to have a system to process the information; second, you show the voters’ list all across Mexico so you can go and see everything is all right if your name appears because the Mexican system based on distrust and suspicion, then you have to show those list so that political parties can review name by name. 

Let me tell you that for 2006 election there were seven million observations to our voters’ list made by political parties, especially the PRD [phonetic] and will review all of them.  And in some cases were mistakes where we deleted a name in case only two hundred thousand observations proceeded.   And [indiscernible] was very much in shape and I will say that there is no bias as to those excluded from the list.  I would say that there is no socio-economic regional bias because we have offices across Mexico.  The five percentage point of those that do not have is because, probably, they live in the US, or probably sometimes we cannot detect people that have already died.  But I would say that it is universal; no bias and universal access to everybody.

Tova Wang:  [Inaudible]

Luis Carlos Ugalde:  You need to bring some identification - your driver’s license, address identification.  And sometimes given the nature of the Mexican way in very poor communities, if you do not have any type of ID you can bring your neighbor and if he or she says they know you, you can get an ID.

Norman Ornstein:  Who does not have an ID?  Who are the four percent?

Luis Carlos Ugalde:  People living in the US, young people that do not have any type of interest.  There is no bias or [indiscernible] in that regard.

John Fortier:  John Fortier, AEI.  I would ask you about people who are away from polling places.  Bob Pastor mentioned special polling locations.  We had some voting here in America back in Mexico.  What is your system for people who vote away from the polling place?  How extensive is that voting?  Is there voting by mail and are there special precautions that you take in that arena to protect the integrity to vote?

Luis Carlos Ugalde:  Absentee voting is not permitted in Mexico; you need to vote in person with the exception of voting from overseas, which in this time for the first time we had in Mexico.  So, absentee voting is only for Mexicans living outside Mexico.  And last year we did that by mail, and about 40,000 Mexicans, most of them in the US, vote by mail.  But aside from that, there is no absentee voting in Mexico.

Robert Pastor:  Let me tell you how the polling stations work as it relates to the US because the idea has some similarity to what was tried in Larimore [phonetic] County in Colorado, which many of you may know about.  The basic problem is for Mexicans who have registered in their local districts and do not live there or are away at college or what ever it is; how can they vote?  The special polling stations were set up in many different cities just for those people. 

Now the hard question, given Mexico's long standing concern about multiple voting, is how do you make sure that those people only vote once.   And what they set up, which is what we need to do in the United States if Larimore County is going to be a model, is modems at the special polling stations that were tied into a single national registration list so that when they voted they showed their name and their card and then they plugged in to the national registration list to make sure they had not voted, and, more importantly, that they would be noted to have voted at that point. 

So, if they did try to vote any other time in a special polling station, they would be found out.  And even if they voted in their own district they would be found out and it was against the law as well.  So, the problem was that the modem did not work quite as fast and as well, and there are other issues there.  But at least they could do it because they had an inter-operable national registration list, which we do not have in the US.

Male Voice:  So the most transferred, [inaudible] to the local districts [inaudible] local candidates or -- how are those votes counted?  Are they counted at separate precincts or are they transferred back to their local [inaudible]?

Luis Carlos Ugalde:  They can only vote for the president, yes.  And let me tell you something; this special polling places that Bob Pastor mentioned as a problem.  Yes, they are a problem but it is in the law.  The law says you can only open five polling places per district and in some areas in Mexico because of many situations in Mexico City you need more than that.  But the Mexican law again establishes only five polling places.  And you know why?  Because of distrust. 

When this law was passed a decade ago, [indiscernible] no more than five polling places per districts, special polling places because you need to control.  Let us have in mind that out system was based on the idea to control authorities from making things that [indiscernible] want and now we are in a different logic but with the same rules of the past.

Norman Ornstein:  It is 11:55.  I think we will go about five minutes long, which means we have 10 minutes.  So let us have some crisps questions, and let me start with Paul.

Paul DeGregorio:  Thank you. Paul DeGregorio, former chairman of US Election Assistance Commission.  Mr. President, first let me congratulate you on a job well done.  I had questions from the US media and policy makers last summer about your election when the recount was going on and I said I had full confidence in IFE because I knew you and I knew the competence of your staff. 

Let me ask you just a technical question about the counting in Mexico from the polling station, how the results –- I know they are counted by hand.  But how are they transmitted from the polling place to the district to IFE and what kind of transparency do you have so people then can look at the protocol of the polling station and check with IFE receipts to make sure that they are the same?  That is my first question. 

My second question, is Mexico is looking at any kind of electronic voting?  I know Brazil, Venezuela uses electronic devices.  Are you looking to pilot programs in Mexico to look at electronic voting?  Thank you.

Norman Ornstein:  Why don't we answer those and then I will take [indiscernible].

Luis Carlos Ugalde:  You have a hundred and thirty thousand polling places.  Each polling place has four poll workers and representatives from each political party.  So you have a lot of people looking at what happens when the polling places closes at 6 PM.  When the polling place closes you have ballot papers and then you begin counting by hand.  And in the case of the presidential election you can even count them for three times and that usually happens. 

So, everybody is clear about what goes on.  Then you fill out the tally sheet, which, by the way, is a complex one by law; you fill out the number of votes per candidate.  Once you conclude the manual counting, the group of poll workers with the party representatives go to the district office of IFE, which means that those polling places in urban areas that information gets faster than those in the countryside in that the district office of IFE would have 300 district offices across Mexico.

They will receive one tally sheet and they capture the information, which goes to the Internet website.  So we provide the electoral information on real time.  A copy of that tally sheet goes to the electoral council of that district and two things happen.  One, is that on election night you see the flow information goes polling place like polling place and you can see not only the information party by party by candidate on election night; that is the preliminary electoral resource [indiscernible]. 

The following Wednesday at each one of the 300 districts in Mexico all electoral councilors of IFE that district which with political representatives go place by place, tally sheet by tally sheet.  They read the numbers openly and publicly.  They review everything and if they have any doubt they can go and open the ballot boxes to recount the votes.  That did happen; about 3,000 ballot boxes were opened on that Wednesday.  And at the end, with that tally sheet information you have final results for IFE.  So, I think it is reviewed [sounds like], overseen by political parties and that is a way this transmitted, the information.

Norman Ornstein:  We will take a few remaining questions together here, then there and over there.

Joseph Browsy [phonetic]:  Joseph Browsy CAIA.  I have many question but I --

Norman Ornstein:  Pick one.

Joseph Browsy:  One or two or one and two.  You have many immigrants in US.  Can immigrants vote there or not?  Second, as a commission I believe everywhere you may have two much political pressure.  How do you resist that and who propose the candidates and for how long?

Norman Ornstein:  Okay, let us go to the back there. 

Jose Lopez:  Jose Lopez, the Mexican News Agency.  As you know we are 10 months away from the elections.  Has the PRD and Lopez [indiscernible] still speaking about fraud?   We just recently read that they are planning to overthrow the Calderon government.  And just yesterday [indiscernible] said that the government -- this is spurious.  What is your take on this?  I know you want to be neutral.  Is this helping democracy in the sense that this is a free expression, or do you think this is undermining IFE’s credibility and the whole system credibility?   And briefly, based on the behavior of President Fox during the 2006 election, what recommendation would we that a constitution explicitly allows or explicitly prohibits political activism from the presidents?

Roy Saltman:  Roy Saltman [phonetic], consultant and author.  My concern – the question concerns the relationship between IFE and the States, particularly in the area of selection of voting equipment.  I was in Nuevo Leon and helped them consider what kind of equipment that they were going to use and it seemed to me that they were favoring an optical scan system; yet I have heard very recently that the Distrito Federal is planning or even has a direct recording electronic system.  And I was wondering if you have an electoral court, how does it consider -- and there are different systems in the various states.  How does the electoral court consider the problems which may arise from different equipments in different states?  Or do you have an electoral court on the lower level, that is, for each estado -- each state?

Norman Ornstein:  One of the, take as many of those as you can.

Luis Carlos Ugalde:  Yes, first migrants can vote from abroad.  In 2006 for the first time we had about 40,000 votes coming mainly from the US by mail, and, yes, there is votes from abroad.  Second, candidates can only run if supported by a party.  Third question:  How did I resist political pressure?  Well, if I can resist political pressures because it is autonomous and because it is supervised by the people.

I would say something else; fraud is impossible in Mexico because it is a bullet-proof system.  It is not a matter of goodwill, but a matter of how the institutional design is done.  If poll workers are a million Mexicans randomly selected and if party representatives are present at each polling place in Mexico and if you have to follow certain rules and if you have a lot of locks [sounds like],  I would say that the Mexican system has more locks [sounds like] than probably any system in the world.  So, it is not a matter of will, but a matter of design.  So the Mexican system is bullet proof because it is designed with locks sufficient to dispel any doubts on Election Day. 

And at the same time if I can resist political pressure because if you have to follow step by step, then any type of interference from outside simply is dispelled because you have to follow the rules of the game.  Therefore, I can tell you that on election day, before election day and after election day, despite political pressure of all sorts, IFE completely autonomous in the way it handled the election, despite controversies around and despite pressures and despite requests and despite demands and accusations that we have been living for the past months, and I would say years. 

Second, with the respect to the second question, accusations of fraud had an impact on people’s perception.  My [indiscernible] in this occasion is that facts, evidence and assessments by international observers talk about a legal and transparent election.  No poll worker - and I want to underline this- no poll worker, and there were half a million observers which were poll workers plus international observers and Mexican observers, no one of them came out to mention, none of them that something irregular had happened on election day. 

There was, some of you may remember, one poll worker who was accused of stuffing a ballot box when he was, indeed, just counting the votes and changing some votes that where mistakenly put in a different box because sometimes voters when they cast the ballot, sometimes they put it in a different box.  That poll worker was changing the votes to the current box.  So there was only one case in which this poll worker said that he was being accused of making a fraud when he was, indeed, cleaning and making corrections to that polling place.  So there is only one case [indiscernible] our workers said everything was okay.  No party representative of any party has ever claimed that something happened wrongly in that polling place. 

So those accusations, my interpretation, my hypothesis is that in every election in which a small margin occurs, there is a room for political strategies and for justification both evidential or something else.  I will not comment on the impact of this for democracy; I can comment that despite those accusations IFE's credibility is about 60 percent today.  So most Mexicans believe that despite the fact, the election was clean. 

Now, my conclusion is that to make these accusations and these controversies something productive into the future, we need to think what to do.  And regarding your question, whether or not political activism on the part of the president, governor [indiscernible] should be forbidden, my conclusion is this: First, you need to make campaigns shorter so that the room for controversy and conflict is less than more.  Second, you need to forbid - that is my opinion - government programs at the federal and state level from being [indiscernible] aired and propaganda and TV ads that are aired by the federal and state governments to be aired doing campaigns.

Let me give you an example; in 2005, the Mexican Congress approved a budget of about $300 million for the federal government for communications for TV advertising, which means that from January to June of 2006 that Mexican federal government spent millions of dollars advertising on TV and radio.  That was legal?  Yes, it was legal; it had been approved by the Mexican Congress and nevertheless many people complain about that fact because in opinion to many - and I agree with that - that creates some sort of inequality because the government announces and implicitly can provide some political support for its party. 

However, if you want to forbid that you need to put it in law and the Mexican Congress cannot approve $300 million dollars in budget for the federal government and then people come out and say that, that is illegal.  Not, it is not illegal; it is completely legal but it can create the ground for unequal conditions of conditions of competition.  But that thing happens at the state level, where governors of all political parties have plenty of resources to announce their programs and implicitly support their political parties. 

So, my opinion is you need to make shorter campaigns then you need to forbid any type of TV advertising or radio advertising for governments at the federal and state levels during campaigns. 

And third if that is correct you can use that free time provided by the state to transfer that to political parties and in that way, change the way political parties can have access and pay for TV and radio advertising.  Aside from that, I think this is the three most important elements to do this. 

Finally with respect to e-voting I would say that the conditions for doing that in Mexico today are politically impossible because, given the nature of the 2006 election, I would say that the ballot paper system will continue to be in place for the next few years or even the next decade.  In my opinion e-voting provides more certainty, provides less mistakes but political conditions, I think, in Mexico are not present to make a change of that size and that magnitude.

Robert Pastor:  Just a couple of quick comments.  First is on his response to my initial comments about the full recounts.  I was not implying or I certainly did not say that IFE should have gone ahead with the full recount.  I think this is precisely an area that the Congress ought to legislate on and that would have made it much easier and would have dispelled doubts which remain because IFE is such a professional organization.  Even if the public opinion has gone up to 60 percent, that is not sufficient in my judgment to reflect, I think, the real professionalism is IFE.  And so there are still doubts out there that need to be dealt with. 

And let me just also say while we have been lauding IFE with good reason, I would not go quite so far as to say that election fraud is impossible in Mexico.  I think there are more checks and balances built into the system because of the history; there is not a more professional, autonomous, impartial organization that exists in almost any place that I know.  But, still, in my observation of the elections, in one of the polling sites the polling leader rejected any international observation of the election -- of the count.  And you may recall I called your office at the time and had, I think, your deputy speak to the head of the director of that and was not able to convince the director to allow.  And I was leading a team that was from all over the world which were horrified that they would not be permitted to see the count. 

What does this say?  It says that at the local level, not just in Mexico and United States, everywhere I have seen, there is the possibility of irregularity.  My judgment is that this probably cancels itself out nationally, precisely because of all of the checks and balances built into the system and indeed in the United States as well.  I think local fraud does occur but I think it probably washes out, and, hopefully, the United States could adapt 10 percent of the checks and balances that Mexico's already built in to reduce it even further.

Norman Ornstein:  Thank you very much, and thank you all for coming.  And as always we want to thank Tim Ryan and Matt Weil and Molly Reynolds for all that they did to put this together.  Thank you.

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