Mexico: Electoral Court orders limited recount of presidential election
Bloomberg reports: Mexico's Federal Electoral Court rejected presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's demand for a full recount of the July 2 vote, ordering instead a review of the tally at fewer than 10 percent of polling places.
The court's seven judges ruled unanimously that Lopez Orbador, who lost the race according to election authorities by 0.6 percentage point, had no claim to a full recount because he challenged results in only 174 of 300 electoral districts -- and some of his fraud claims didn't stand up. The court agreed to review ballots from 11,839 of more than 130,000 polling places.
The limited scope of the recount makes its unlikely Felipe Calderon's 243,934 margin of victory will be erased, said Todd Eisenstadt, a professor of government at American University in Washington and author of a book on Mexican election law. Mexican bonds and currency rallied on expectations Calderon, a former energy minister under President Vicente Fox, will maintain Fox's policies in favor of free trade, low inflation and spending restraints. -- Bloomberg.com: Worldwide