At the end of the electoral day in Mexico, an appointment in which citizens had been summoned to participate in a consultation to define the continuity of the mandate of the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the electoral authorities of that country delivered the first balance with the results, reporting in the first instance the participation index.
According to the ‘quick count’, the democratic appointment would not have counted even with 20% of the participation, barely reaching a percentage of turnout at the polls of 18%, a figure well below the 40% minimum required to achieve the threshold that would make the resulting decision binding.
Thus, before counting the winning option, between the early end of AMLO’s mandate, or the continuity of his scheduled mandate until 2024, local media They already qualify what happened as a failurewhich opens the door to a new debate around, which adds to the multiple controversies that had already aroused the citation to that space, which had been promoted by the president of that country.
A Chronicle of a Death Foretold?
After the polls closed, the president of the Mexican electoral entity, Lorenzo Córdova, warned that “participation is between 17 and 18.2%”, a situation that was already in sight since the afternoon hours, when the different international and local media warned of the low turnout at the polls, which was driven, among many other things, by the disinterest of the people, the lack of information, and the opposition of the sectors not affected by AMLO who had questioned the reason for the democratic exercise, denouncing a series of irregularities.
Faced with the lack of information, AMLO had attacked the INEpointing to the institution as an accomplice in a “sabotage of the referendum”, noting that only 57,500 voting stations were installed, a figure significantly lower than the 161,000 points that are usually located for a federal election.
At the time, the electoral institution had warned that this was derived from the lack of resources, pointing out that to comply with the appointment, whose call was approved through the collection of signatures, it was then necessary to have fewer tables.
Despite the setbacks, the electoral authorities had confirmed that the 99.5% of the expected tablesin a country that does not have compulsory voting.
The partial results
Although the results do not matter if the threshold was not achieved, it is important to note that, according to the partial results, the The consultation indicates that between 90.3 and 91.9% of the voters expressed themselves in favor of the continuity of AMLOwhile only between 6.4 and 7.8% advocated their early departure.