Ahead of Mexico vote: Fears, warnings over possible fraud

MEXICO CITY — The specter of possible fraud rears its head in Mexico each electoral campaign, both in the popular imagination and among candidates on the ballot. This year has been no exception.

With leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador holding a wide lead in most polls, his allies are warning even before today's (Sunday) presidential vote that there better not be any funny business.

"They shouldn't dare commit a fraud, because if they do they will meet the devil," Yeidckol Polevnsky, president of the candidate's Morena party, said this week. "We will not accept it."

This is Lopez Obrador's third try for the nation's top office, and he alleged fraud twice before after losses in 2006 and 2012.

This time around some supporters again fear that dirty tricks could be employed to keep him from office, even as authorities and outside observers say the possibility is remote.

Such fears have a basis in history. For most of the 20th century, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, dominated virtually all aspects of politics and held the presidency uninterruptedly for seven decades until 2000, and then regained it in 2012.

Dead people voting, vote-buying, theft or burning of ballots, threats of violence, rigged counting, particularly in remote areas - over the years it's all been seen.

In recent weeks, officials confirmed armed assaults to steal ballots in three southern states, while a coalition of nongovernmental groups monitoring the campaign said vote-buying schemes and threats to cut off social programs have targeted entire communities.