July 2, time for us to choose our next president. We get to choose between the guys who f***d the country over for 71 years, the ones currently in power who aren't as corrupt but haven't done much, or the socialist f***k ups that have some obviously heroin-induced ideas in how to run a country; not real good choices, but then the less bad is the best, right?

Just let us hope my people don't pull a USA and choose someone unfit to govern. Let's also hope we see some very low levels of abstentionism, this next presidency is critical for us; we've escaped dictatorship, but we're not out of the woods yet.

I should know this but what country are you from?

I hope the vote goes well, but its usially a choose between the lesser of 2 evils :(

I'm hoping you all go for the Socialist f**ck up. If only because it has the possibility to really stir things up. Real political changes have been taking place all over South America, and this might just start to bring things North.

He wants to open up the North American Free Trade agreement to debate again, and if he does, Canada will have to follow suit. There are a lot of folks up here who hate it, and would love to see it go bye bye. If it does, things are gonna start snowballing big time.

López Obrador FTW!

That should tell you which country, Jes :)

As long as the flow of tequila is not interrupted, I care not.
Someone more interesting would be good tho, and if NAFTA goes away I won't shed a tear.

Yes, NAFTA needs to change (it's incredible the tons of little illegal tricks the US is using to block mexican and canadian goods and services from entering the country) but I will not have it at the expense of having that loon in power. Talk about the cure being worse than the sickness!

Voting is closing as I write this, and the first prelims will be announced in about two hours. By 11 PM, we'll have a pretty good idea who's winning, as well as some data on how many of us actually voted.

What's the turnout been in Mexico over the last few decades? Pretty good? Or is the apathy as rampant down there as it is up here?

Turnout varies, but it's never as high as one would want. Apathy is a VERY big problem; out of my family (six persons) only one of my brothers and me went to vote; we actually had to wait half an hour in line before we could cast our votes, though, which is a good sign turnout was good. I have never understood why people think taking no action is the best choice in cases like these, but you cannot make them see reason no matter how hard you try; at least I'll have the upper hand in political discussions for the next six years, regardless of the outcome.

As for the election, the vote was too close for statistical analysis to predict a winner, so every vote will have to be counted; we'll know the results wednesday at the earliest.

Yeah, as of this AM it's STILL up in the air. Whoa.

is it me... or... like... does everyone who puts ***'s in fuck seem to put 1 too many? its a 4 letter word... 3 ***'s is good... not f***k thats a 5 letter word... :-P

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now to the topic at hand: dont you hate political choices? its bad enough that in the US you vote for someone who will lie to you anyway, but i mean... seriously... its gotta suck to vote for someone who wont make the country any better with their current ideas.

Think things'll ever change?

Well, down here things are changing. A nice example is the parity of our peso to the dollar. Last president before Fox (Mr. Zedillo, the last one to be put in power by fraudulent means) took our coin from three pesos to a dollar to ELEVEN pesos per dollar (actually 3000 to 11000 pesos, but then they did some odd economic adjustment and struck out the three zeroes at the end) during his six years of presidency. You can imagine how that well that went for us, many jobs closed down and many people lost their small businesses, among them my family; hell, we almost lost our HOUSE. Under Fox, the dollar has hovered between 11.10 and 11.75 for the last six years; just through that one can see their economic plan makes sense and just for that they got my vote. It is stupid to assume (as the other two parties wanted us to think) that you could fix in six years what 71 years of abuse broke up and brought down; obviously, what these people are doing works and needs more time to yield more results and make things better. Here's hoping enough of us voted to give them more time.

"...Calderon is in the lead by 380 thousand votes. It is worth noting that the IFE nullified 825 thousand votes..."

Holy hell it's hanging-chad city down there!

And now Obrador has a 1% lead! No way. Go Obrador!

Calderon has officially been announced as the winner, with Obrador quickly following up saying that he'd appeal the decision. Is it over?

Edit: It's not. Obrador is obviously a sore loser. Boo to that.

Obrador looks like he's gonna cause some problems. Hm. I hope not.

Haha, boo to that? After how many years of conservative/elitist PRI corruption? Sorry... 70+ years?

And you can't see how a Socialist candidate who was within 0.6% votes of a win could be upset? When over 2 million votes were discounted (due to whatever reason, one has to take into consideration the regions where they were discounted)...

...anyway... yeah I'm just bitter that NAFTA is gonna be in place for at least another 6 years, and the Mexican poor are gonna be paying tax dollars into no-interest loans for the wealthy.... wooo!

This just in.

Ow, don't hit me.