The apparent tranquility months prior to the election also led the Carter Center to stay home. The Center, long a mainstay of international election observation in Mexico, expressed confidence in the Federal Electoral Institute's (IFE) promise and capacity to conduct free, fair, even "impeccable" elections.
The US, for once, seemed resigned to the genuine possibility of a left-center government ruling in Mexico. Even in early 2006 when Lopez Obrador was leading comfortably in the polls, US Secretary of Sate Condoleeza Rice declared the US ready to work productively with whichever candidate won the election.
Indeed, the status quo seemed so secure that Zapatista dissidents toured the country denouncing what they viewed as an electoral non-choice between different ideological flavors of the same bad government.
But appearances can deceive. The elections were far from impeccable, and rather than usher in an era of democratic consensus, they have shaken Mexico's status quo in ways unimaginable two months ago.
Behind the hullabaloo of political campaigns marked by months of polarizing personal attacks and economic fear mongering, new political alignments of rich vs. poor, right vs. left, and north vs. south emerged in ways not seen during the seventy years of monopoly rule by the PRI and its all-encompassing ideology of national unity. In the months just prior to the election, political tensions turned violent: In April police shot and killed striking miners in Michoacán; in May, state police gassed, beat, jailed, molested, and in one case killed protestors in San Salvador Atenco; in June, Oaxaca state police violently attacked encampments of striking teachers.
The pre-election violence made visible underlying tensions, and the election results raised the profile of long standing class and geographical divisions that pit the poorer agricultural states of Mexico's south against the wealthier more industrialized states of the north. The harsh presidential campaign and its bitter aftermath may have accelerated splits along Mexico's natural fault lines in ways that might otherwise have taken years to develop.
It is already clear that no matter what the outcome of the ongoing dispute over the vote and demands for re-count, the repercussions of this summer's electoral crisis will be felt for years.
So what happened on July 2?
On Election Day about 41 million Mexicans voted in more than 130,000 precincts with relatively few problems reported during the day. Global Exchange, which has been observing Mexican elections for the last 12 years, in collaboration with Alianza Civica, Mexico's premier citizen election watchdog organization, had observers on the ground prior to and during the election.
Global Exchange observers received credible testimony of vote buying for cash in the State of Mexico and saw evidence of construction materials being exchanged for political favor in San Luis Potosi, but virtually all polling stations opened, and voting was heavy and peaceful throughout the country.
At 11:00 PM, four hours after the polls closed in most of Mexico, all eyes were on IFE president, Carlos Luis Ugalde, who appeared on television to announce the much anticipated results of the IFE's presidential "quick count" based a random sampling of several thousand precincts across the country.
Ugalde's pre-recorded remarks praised the work of the many thousands of citizen elections workers and his own IFE. Then came the first shock: The election was so close, said Ugalde, that he could not reveal the results of the "quick count." Naming a winner, he said, would have to be postponed at least until all 300 electoral districts confirmed vote totals three days later.
The second shock came just minutes later when Lopez Obrador, followed by Calderon, also appeared on television, both claiming victory.
That night, ongoing tabulations of preliminary count numbers from around the country were projected on screens at IFE headquarters and on newspaper websites. By early morning these numbers suggested that with nearly 98 % of the precincts, Calderon had a small but seemingly insurmountable lead. Congratulatory phone calls started coming in. George Bush called from Air Force One, Canadian PM Stephen Harper rang up, and so did President Alvardo Uribe of Colombia. But soon after Calderon's phone started ringing, the whole process was thrown into doubt following charges that the percentage vote totals the IFE had publicized were based on a short count that left millions of votes unaccounted for, and when the votes in question were added back in, Calderon's advantage diminished considerably, to just over half of one percent -- less than two votes per precinct average nationwide.
The baffling behavior of the IFE and the confusion it generated sparked suspicion and led to calls for closer scrutiny. With a crisis brewing and the credibility of Mexico's critically important electoral institutions on the line, Global Exchange issued a call for a full recount of all the votes in order to de-escalate the growing conflict and provide the winner of the recount -- be it Felipe Calderón or Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador - with as much legitimacy as possible so he can govern effectively for the next six years.