Risk Atlas higlights vote buying and violence hot spots in Mexico

Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from Animal Politico                     

                   

The study indicates hot spots of violence against candidates and politicians, purchase of votes, and anomalies during the electoral process.

by Agustín Salgado

Social organizations developed a risk atlas in which the regions of the country most prone to vote buying are located, the electoral sections that have behaved in an atypical manner, and the states where there have been acts of violence against political actors.

The document, presented Thursday night in Mexico City, establishes that from 2006 to May 8 of this year, 292 people, including mayors, candidates, pre-candidates, leaders of political parties, deputies, officials, ex-legislators, social leaders, in addition to journalists who cover elections, have been murdered or disappeared during the electoral campaigns.

The atlas, which can be consulted at atlasriesgoelectoral.mx, was presented on Thursday night in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, by political scientist Boris González Romero.

The organizations Movimiento Pro-Vecino, Artículo 19, Rompe El Miedo, Acción Ciudadana Frente a la Pobreza, la Asociación Nacional de Alcaldes, Tendiendo Puentes y Democracia MX, among others, assisted in the creating of the atlas.

Laura Elena Herrejón, president of Movimiento Provecino, confided that the document will help the authorities implement preventive actions to provide security to candidates and the population in general, as well as allowing "a free, fair and reliable electoral process."

The document, whose databases can be consulted freely, will continue to expand after the election day of July 1.

In order to identify the risk factors, statistics were used from the Nacional Electoral, the Fiscalía Especializada para la Atención de Delitos Electorales, the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, the Consejo Nacional de Población and the Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social, in addition to the reference research carried out by the Asociación Nacional de Alcaldes, Artículo 19 and the Movimiento Provecino.

These are some of the hot sports the study reveals.

Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas, the most vulnerable states to buy the vote. 

In order to indicate where vote purchasing or the conditioning of social programs with electoral ends takes place, the marginalization indexes and the degree of social cohesion of all the municipalities of the country were analyzed.

The populations with greater risk to be victims of these crimes are those where insufficient monetary income is perceived, and the few opportunities for education as well as inadequate housing.

Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas are the states of the Republic where there is a "very high social vulnerability.” Next are Nayarit, San Luis Potosi, Veracruz, Hidalgo, Michoacan, Puebla, Tabasco, Campeche and Yucatan.

At the municipal level, the Electoral Political Risk Atlas identified 817 municipalities with very high levels of marginalization and therefore vulnerable to the electoral management of institutional support. With a high degree of marginalization, 283 municipalities were counted.

González Romero explained that by crossing these variables it was found that there is a correlation between the deficiencies of the populations with atypical electoral results.

More votes than voters 

The second variable of the atlas analyzes the results of the federal votes from 1994 to 2015. The purpose was to detect anomalies in the electoral behavior, both of null and of participation level.

The data published by the National Electoral Institute from 1991 to 2003 does not include the nominal lists, so a request for access to the information was made to obtain them. With the complete information, the specialists detected electoral sections that registered a greater number of votes than voters.

This is the case of section 201 of Colima, which in 2006 registered 852 votes when the nominal list was made up of 184 citizens and section 26 of Sonora that doubled, twice, the number of votes with respect to that of voters because in 1994 it received 460 votes with a nominal list of 220 people and six years later registered 1094 votes when 527 citizens were registered in the list.

"Here are exemplified only some cases but there are many electoral sections as well. You could say that 1994 was the first presidential election organized by the IFE but it also happens in 2012 and it will surely be repeated in 2018. We will be vigilant to update the atlas and tell the authority that the votes are not counted well,” warned Boris González.

In the 2012 election, 223 sections were detected corresponding to Veracruz, the State of Mexico, Oaxaca, Mexico City and Puebla, which registered an electoral participation greater than 100 percent and 535, located in Yucatán, Chiapas, State of Mexico, Guerrero and Campeche obtained a participation that goes from 85 to 99 percent, "very high" figure for the historical average.

The murders of political actors weaken the institutions

The third variable of the atlas covers the acts of violence against political actors. For its creation, official data and reference from group Articulo 19, Movimiento Provecino and the Asociación Nacional de Alcaldes were used.

The levels of violence were categorized into two levels: grade 1 which includes harassment, threats, intimidation, forced displacement and deprivation of liberty and grade 2 which refers to killings, torture and disappearances.

The states with the highest number of cases in grade 1 are Mexico City, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Coahuila and Puebla.

Grade 2 refers to the 292 fatalities, of which 9 were elected mayors; 59 mayors in office; 2 mayors with license; 25 candidates and pre-candidates; 9 party leaders; 41 journalists covering the "source of corruption and politics"; 3 deputies in functions; 47 officials; 1 exlegislator; 2 relatives of political actors; 25 social leaders and 2 advocates.

González Romero warned that attacks against political actors weakens the Mexican State because they are not directed at individuals but at the institutions they represent.