The counting of votes in Mexico in federal elections of 2006 and 2009: democratic certainty or insecurity?

Abstract

During the electoral days, in every representative democracy, it´s foreseeable that mistakes happen in the counting and assignation of votes to the distinct competitors. Therefore, in the specific case of Mexico, a fundamental question arises: do those mistakes affect or not, in a significant way, the results of the different candidates, especially when there is narrowness in the numbers?

To answer this question, the current work analyzes in detail those cases where electoral packages were open and the votes were recounted during the federal elections of 2006 and 2009, since those exercises allow us to know, with sufficient precision, the magnitude of the mistakes done by the functionaries of the polling booths and their probable electoral impact.