Chilchota, Michoacán: civilians enter voting booths, burn ballots

 Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from Sin Embargo

                       

Mexico City, July 1 (SinEmbargo) .- Inhabitants of Chilchota, Michoacán, entered voting booths, seized electoral materials and set them on fire.

According to information from local media, a group of men entered the 0381 voting area, located at the José María Morelos y Pavón Elementary School, took the material and ended up burning it in public view. After the ballots were incinerated, the demonstrators said it had been a symbolic action.

Another square, in the municipality of Michoacán, went the same way. Officials from another booth (the third) have been held against their will.

Ramón Hernández Reyes, president of the Electoral Institute of Michoacán, confirmed that the materials in the booths were seized.

Special ballot booth 0381, in the same municipality of Michoacán, also canceled activities due to violent acts that put officials at risk.

#Seguridad #Morelia # Michoacán 
Burning of election material in the municipality of #Chilchota 
So far no authority has ruled on this. # Eleccion2018 # EleccionesMéxico @INEMexico pic.twitter.com/AtKP3S5wVL
- The Balance (@LaBalanzaN) July 1, 2018

Yesterday, on the eve of the election, the tension in the community of Nahuatzen, located in the heart of the Purhepecha Plateau, increased: the offices of the National Electoral Institute (INE), the municipal committees of the National Action Party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) were sacked. Furniture and electoral material was burned; there were gunshots, and in the struggles, a comunero suffered a severed finger.

A day before, inhabitants carried out blockades in the four accesses to this community on the part of the Indigenous Citizen Council of Nahuatzen and ditches were dug to avoid the passage of the electoral ballots.

The same day, shortly before midnight, it was detected that some ballots were given to the municipality of Michoacán, so comuneros gathered in the plaza and went to the INE offices from where they stole and set on fire electoral materials; and later to the municipal committees of the PRI, PRD and PAN.

IN ELECTORAL PROCESS, 34 STOLEN BALLOT PACKAGES

Until before the events in Chilchota, during the current electoral process, there had been 34 stolen packages, after the seven stolen Friday morning in Chiapas. Of the total, five correspond to the federal election and 29 to the local ones.

Next Sunday 3,406 elected positions will be elected, both at the federal level and in 30 states. The register is composed of 89 million 1233 thousand 355 registered people, and 96 thousand more who already exercised their suffrage from abroad.

It is expected that at 23:00 hours on July 1, "there will be enough information to publicize the results of the Quick Count" on the results of the federal elections.