What the U.S. could learn from Mexico

IN 1986, I OBSERVED an election in Mexico's northern state of Chihuahua and learned almost everything I would ever need to know about election fraud. Last week, I observed elections again in Mexico, but this time, I concluded that the United States and the world could learn much from Mexico about how to conduct and judge a free and fair election.

This might come as a shock. After all, the election looked messy from the outside. It took four days before Mexico's Federal Election Institute, or IFE, announced a winner -- Felipe Calderon, the leader of the conservative National Action Party -- by the slimmest of margins (0.58%, or about 244,000 votes out of 41 million). Calderon did not bother to wait for the announcement to proclaim his triumph, and his main rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, also announced victory and quickly challenged the IFE's conclusion.

Close elections are always dangerous. Even in long-standing democracies like the U.S., a close election (like in 2000) often leaves the losing party resentful and angry. In new democracies, political suspicions often collide with administrative incapacity during close elections, leading to unrest or violence.

It is too soon to know whether Mexico will avoid these pitfalls. But its chances of doing so are greater because, in the last decade, it has constructed some of the most sophisticated electoral institutions and procedures in the democratic world. I compared the electoral systems of North America, and the good news is that the U.S. came in third. The bad news is that there are only three countries in North America.

It is hard for most Americans to accept that Mexico has overtaken us in electoral administration, but let me count the ways. First, U.S. elections mostly are run by partisan secretaries of state or local officials -- not by the federal government. Mexico has a nonpartisan, fully autonomous national election commission -- the IFE -- whose members must be approved by two-thirds of the legislature. The IFE meetings are open to the political parties but not run by them. On election day, the IFE tracked problems and responded instantly. The IFE is one of Mexico's most respected institutions.

Second, only one U.S. state allows international observers. The IFE opens all of Mexico to international observers and facilitates access to all stages of the process.