Mexico offers advice on elections for Iraq

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico is offering to help Iraq create new, democratic elections based on its experience in building a system that allowed the peaceful end to 71 years of single-party rule.

Manuel Carrillo, coordinator of international affairs for the Federal Electoral Institute, said Tuesday that the help would be provided through the United Nations.

Mexico's Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez first mentioned the proposal during a news conference on Monday in Bangkok, where he was accompanying President Vicente Fox at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

Carrillo said his institute would help Iraq with "its knowledge and experience in terms of organizing clean and transparent elections."

Once famous for rigged, government-dominated elections, Mexico gradually created an elaborate electoral system meant to ensure clean elections. Federal voting is administered by the Electoral Institute and overseen by electoral courts.

The reforms led to a first opposition-party gubernatorial in 1989 and to the first opposition presidential victory in 2000, when Fox defeated the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had governed Mexico since 1929.

Mexico's 2000 presidential election was notably less controversial than that of the United States.

The Mexican electoral agency has sent teams of experts to 22 countries since 1993, advising on issues such as voter registration, training of poll workers and reporting of returns, though Carrillo said the effort does not involve imposing a Mexican-style model.

"For any country, it is important to be able to make a modest contribution to international peace," Carrillo said.

Mexico was to present its offer in Madrid this week at a meeting in which the United States was seeking international help in rebuilding Iraq.

Mexico has lots of great ideas. One great idea is to have their police officers pay for their jobs, then extract money from everyone unfortunate to fall into their nets. It's called "la mordita", the "little bite". Another great idea they have is to allow the top 1% of their society to own 95%+ of all of the wealth of the nation, then allow the other 99% of the population to fight over the 5% that's left. Finally, their best idea of all is to encourage the people impovershed by their corrupt system to emigrate to "El Norte" for free medical care, food stamps, Section 8 housing, free education, and other handouts.

Oh yes, Mexico is a shining beacon for the world. A shining beacon of corruption, poverty, misery and hopelessness. Such a fine example of a great world power.

Really it does make sense. I've been living in Mexico for three years, and am impressed with their voting machinery. After a totally bothed election in 1988 (the winning candidate was an opposition coalition candidate who was over 50% in the vote count when the computers mysteriously failed, and there was a fire in the computer rooms... hmmm). The price of not contesting that election was a series of consititutional changes.

First, the Federal Elections Commission was put in charge of the mechanics and has done a more than credible job. Voter ID cards are used here instead of your drivers license for everyday ID (check cashing, etc), simply because they´re unforible, and every citizen has one, and accepts the "IFE" card as valid.

The country developed a secure database of voter IDs (including phots and digitalized thumb prints) that is checked when voters sign in at their polling place. The polling registration is registered in real time (no mean trick in a country where there are polling stations in places without electricity and/or cellular connections don't work -- islands in the jungles, mountain villages etc). The ballot is printed on security paper (by the same gov office that prints the currency) and marked with special indelible pencils.

Just to assure the voters that the ballot boxes aren't stuffed, they're clear.

The Federal Elections Commission finances the elections based on the party's polling in the previous election. New parties receive seed money. There WERE 12 parties in the last election (some of them frauds -- like the one whose officers were all relatives, and held their party meetings in Paris -- France, not Texas!), but nothing's perfect. How new parties are to be financed is under discussion by the 6 remaining parties in congress.

It's ironic, but I figure the Mexicans were the world's experts on stealing elections, so it only figures that they'd design an election machinery that eliminates just about any possible fraud. Other than illegal campaign contributions (one party was fined 1 billion US dollars for accounting problems, and Fox's coalition from the 2000 election is in BIG trouble for taking foreign contributions), and some penny-ante stuff (campaign posters in government offices -- which earns the offending candidate a pretty stiff fine), about the only creative way I´ve seen of stealing an election was in one village where the losing candidate literally kidnapped the ballot boxes. He still lost, but he tried a new one.

Given that Mexico cannot involve itself in foreign wars unless it is directly attacked, why begrudge them the chance to use something where their expertise is recognized?

First, there is a constitutionally mandated Federal Elections

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