“Origin” Title: “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions”

Summary of the Argument as it stands Today: (Introduction follows)
REVIEW OF INCONSISTENCIES IN MEXICO’S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF JULY 2 2006

[[Again-- I remind-- you are describing an alien process-- new events on the stage of human affairs. Arendt (citing the sophists): we travel into history walking backwards; these events are still at the far periphery of our vision.]]

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Observers of Mexico’s electoral process have been attentive to the developments since July 2nd and many of them were also well informed of developments in the months running up to the election.

As public manifestation against the lack of transparency in this election grows and as AMLO’s coalition has demanded a ballot-by-ballot count in order to eliminate all doubts, observers demand to know the evidence against this election.

Evidence casting doubts that this was a clean election has flowed and continues to flow since the evening of July 2nd. Here is a summary of this evidence so far:

(1) The IFE failed to name a likely winner on the night of the election, even though it’s calculations had Felipe Calderón (FC) ahead of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) by 1% of the vote, a respectable 400,000 vote figure, given that the PREP count system was established with the presumption of a margin of error of 0.03 percent.
(2) On July 3rd, the IFE admitted that this difference had narrowed to 0.6%, because of the inclusion of results from a large number of voting stations left out of the original PREP count. This occurred only after AMLO had objected that such voting stations still not being counted.
(3) There were 283,448 less votes reported as cast for President (from any party) than reported for senatorial positions. In many ‘adjacent’ voting stations (“contiguas” in the IFE’s parlance), there no votes were reported as cast for President at all.
(4) In states where AMLO was leading, the difference between votes reported for senatorial positions and for President was the largest (in favour of senatorial ballots) and this discrepancy harmed AMLO. In states where Felipe Calderon was leading, the difference between reported votes for senatorial positions and those for president were the largest (in favour of Presidential votes) and this favouredof Felipe Calderon. The extremes were in Tabasco (96,450 votes less for President) and Nuevo León (41,290 votes more for President). In the six states where AMLO led, votes for president were less than those for senator by 313,882. In states where Felipe Calderon led, ballots for President outnumbered those for senators by 111,178.
(5) After the PREP, [[AWK & unclear] the next stage of the electoral process was the count by district]], which involved a count of tally sheets in all 300 districts. [In this process...,] councils are authorized to open ballot boxes for a manual recount of votes [under... [what limited conditions: "a majority vote of..."]]. AMLO’s coalition demanded that 50,000 boxes be opened on the grounds of irregularities visible to varying degrees. District councils only authorized the opening of 2,700 boxes. This ‘manual recount’ gave AMLO an additional 102,000 votes.

(6) The district-by-district count resulted in the [WC: amendment] of many discrepancies, first identified on July 2nd-3rd, between tally sheet resultsand the PREP results as well as the inclusion of voting stations that had been left out of the PREP. The result was an upward adjustment in votes for all three candidates, including Roberto Madrazo. But in this count AMLO’s upward revision versus the PREP was 16.3% above the upward revision of votes for Felipe Calderon and 15.8% over the upward revision for Roberto Madrazo, both significant differences, especially in light of the few boxes that district councils allowed to be opened.
(7) In the end, the district count proved wrong the presumption of a small margin of error in the PREP: the correction over the first PREP result was 8.7 percent.
(8) Intervention of President Fox in favour of FC and against AMLO has been documented extensively, and the question of its constitutionality now rests with the Electoral Tribunal.
(9) Intervention of Secretary of Communication in favour of PAN in this election is also documented, and and the question of its legality now rests with the Electoral Tribunal.
(10) Claims that the electronic counting of votes was biased, or otherwise abnormal, and therefore showed paths not typical of stochastic processes have been submitted by professional analysts and mathematicians, and may justify further enquiries.

This report has been based on official information from the IFE and analysis offered by professional analysts who examined the vote counting process throughout July.

NOTE: Due to technological constraints, the above presents my personal edit of the introductory section to an unreleased document, often without indication of (as yet unapproved) changes I have suggested; some editorial remarks remain in brackets.
My introductory comments (without editing):

“Liebste–”

I decided earlier today that there was no translation for that word into English, as it is far more common in German than its literal translation, and different in cognative and cognitive “content.” Here is Nietzsche’s great lesson, “terms with histories have no definitions,” …

I spent much of today, with difficultly, reviewing your documents. They are difficult. Those I have discussed their content with, when they engage the content, seem to have a common reaction, “they make my head hurt.”

My comments of last were made in a similar state; by the middle of today, many of my muscles, from the end of my foot to the top of my head, were strained with tension. I suspect this auto-somatic response is the result of millions of years of training the human organism how to respond to situations that are fundamentally wrong, and beyond our comprehension. Freud: “Unheimlichkeit,” the odd sense of unease, of events that are distrubingly alien to our experience. (His translators refused to switch that to English, though Stratchey was too quick to move “Kultur” to its false cognate).

Content. You asked me to avoid considerations of style, focusing on content, comprehension, clarity, “understandability”– no simple instructions to give me, as I see no easy criteria for distinction. There is no easy difference between inserting “district” before “council” so that a foreign reader is clear on the referent, and making a (seemingly stylistic) change of phrase that accomplishes the same aim.

I do not know where your group is with this document at this point, but after reading through everything, and attempting to think it through and discuss it and its reception, I have taken a stab at the task, at least in the introductory section– in pen on two print copies at different times. The changes that I made on both attempts are below.

Where I have felt that my consideration was primarily, or likely, one of style, I have left the language as presented. Where I judge that there is a primary consideration of comprehension or understandability, I have presented changes that seem best to me.

I am not going to go on about the (significant) questions of understanding vis-a-vis the abstract (anthromorphic) language of economics vs. “good English” in Orwell’s sense of that phrase, but where the issue seems to me to predominantly affect comprehension, I have suggested a change. Where it seems predominantly necessary, I have chopped a run-on sentence and replaced a phrasing that is too technical, jargonistic or simply alien to the Anglo-Saxon, with its common equivalent. When it did not, I have left the abstract or alien phrase.

Notwithstanding, I point out three problems in my approach to this document (and in the situation in general):

1. I am close to your discussions and these events, in a way that the reader will not be. Where I can understand your phrasing, what your are describing and what you mean, that comes from a familiarity that its intended reader will not have.
2. And yet the document, and trying to understand its implications, still makes my head hurt. Thus, “I am not satisfied” that we have come far enough in explication. Greater simplicity is needed.
3. The meaning of these events is disputed, “unfolding,” and unclear– no path is yet clear through the “fog of war.”

Pray that we discover the right path.

Finally– my next tact in moving through these documents will be to separate each of their major and minor points onto index cards, which will then take up a desk or two, where they can be rearranged and reordered, both narratively and logically, to see where I can get (you have two separate historical narratives here, plus a logical argument that does not fit either narrative…)

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