Why hide Mexico's ballots?

MEXICO now has two presidents-elect. One officially recognized by the electoral authorities -- Felipe Calderon -- and the other proclaimed the "legitimate president" by millions of followers -- Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. There is one way to settle this crisis. As in the aftermath of Bush vs. Gore in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, a group of Mexico's newspapers should be allowed to conduct their own canvass of the ballots.

Unfortunately, the Federal Electoral Institute, which organizes the presidential elections, has announced that it will not open up the ballots to public scrutiny. The institute appears bent on repeating the government's performance after the 1988 presidential election, in which the computers "malfunctioned." It is widely believed that massive fraud allowed Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to mysteriously overcome the early lead of the leftist candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas. To cover its tracks, the government then quickly burned the evidence.

Mexico's freedom of information act, enacted in 2002, is one of the best in the world. It gives full priority to transparency, stating that everything should be made public except when disclosure might harm economic stability or national security. But even this "reserved" information must be made available after 12 years have passed.

Mexican law does keep confidential personal information, including names, photographs and sexual orientations of particular individuals. But, of course, secret ballots don't contain any of this material. Although the institute is required by law to destroy the ballots eventually, there is no need to do so immediately. And it would be illegal to carry it out prematurely for the purpose of avoiding the freedom-of-information requests.

To his credit, Calderon has asked the institute to "preserve the ballots for as long as possible" in the interest of ensuring the "certainty" of the electoral results. This is a positive step, but it does not get to the heart of the issue. Preserving the ballots will do no good if no one is allowed to examine them.

Even worse, Calderon's National Action Party voted Tuesday against forming a special congressional commission to keep watch over the ballots, placing doubt on PAN's commitment to transparency. Calderon and his party should explicitly state that the ballots should be opened to public scrutiny and take measures to ensure this takes place.