MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A leftist anti-poverty campaigner took a slim lead over his conservative rival in a dramatic recount of Mexico’s presidential election vote on Wednesday and warned the country’s stability was at stake.

In scenes reminiscent of the Florida recount in the U.S. presidential vote in 2000, the divided nation bit its nails as partial returns showed Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador overtaking Felipe Calderon, who ended a just ahead in an initial count.

Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, led pro-U.S. lawyer Calderon by 2 percentage points in the recount of 80 percent of polling stations but it was still too early to declare a victor from Sunday’s vote.

Protests broke out in the capital to press home claims that the leftist was the victim of fraud in the preliminary count.

Lopez Obrador warned electoral authorities to be thorough in the recount, expected to last about a day.

“The stability of the country is at stake,” he said.
reuters.com

The difference is that, unlike Florida, ALL the votes are being recounted.

Yesterday: More votes counted — gap shrinks
…Federal Electoral Institute officials were under mounting public criticism Tuesday for not counting some 2.6 million ballots that they deemed had “inconsistencies” because of conflicting information or blank entries. At a hastily called evening news conference, institute officials finally released these votes, which narrowed Calderon’s lead from 1.04 percent to 0.64 percent.

Election officials also noted that the initial count did not include an additional 827,317 ballots that were nullified because of undisclosed errors or approximately 800,000 ballots that did not arrive to counting centers on time.

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