Claudia, president, determines the Electoral Court

The Superior Chamber of the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Branch of the Federation (TEPJF) yesterday confirmed the results of the presidential election of June 2, ratified the validity of all votes registered by the National Electoral Institute (INE) in favor of Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo and noted that those who disagreed did not provide evidence of their statements.

The winning candidate, from the coalition Let’s Keep Making History, made up of Morena, PT and Verde, obtained 35 million 924 thousand 519 votes (59.75 percent of the total); Xóchitl Gálvez, from the opposition Fuerza y ​​Corazón por México, 16 million 502 thousand 697 (27.45 percent), and Jorge Álvarez Máynez, from Movimiento Ciudadano (MC), 6 million 204 thousand 710 votes (10.3 percent).

The vote was split, as has often happened in this higher court since last December, this time by four votes to two. In this way, the court left the INE’s calculations intact.

The opposition filed 240 complaints against this election, which were classified in 233 files, but only 155 were analyzed. The remaining 78, filed by MC, PRD, one by the PAN and another by a citizen, were dismissed, either because they were submitted to the court at the wrong time, did not bear a signature or, as in the case of the orange party, because they were not processed by the corresponding local representative.

For the review, the trials were divided among the five current magistrates. The sixth, headed by Claudia Valle, president of the Monterrey regional court, was called to join a few days ago, as an alternative to achieve the quorum legal to qualify the presidential election.

And when it was thought that it would be a procedural session, four of the six, Monica Soto (president), Felipe de la Mata and Felipe Fuentes, as well as Valle, opposed annulling the vote of 71 polling stations, as proposed by the projects of Reyes Rodriguez and Janine Otálora.

Even though both said that removing votes (just over 30 thousand) would not affect the general result at all and, above all, that they had to resolve with common sensehis colleagues rejected the proposal.

The majority argued that the PRD alleged irregularities in thousands of polling stations, but did not prove them. They gave the example of the argument that the vote was received by people other than those authorized by the INE, but the objection did not include the names of the citizens who were impersonated or those who operated them.

Rodríguez –who proposed modifying 15 of the 32 counts, which meant 11,248 annulled votes– expressed her annoyance at the majority’s refusal: “Do I need to say the name of Judge Claudia Valle to identify the person who intervened before and differed from my position? Judge Fuentes? If I say: ‘I am going to vote in favor of Judge Otálora’s projects, my own, and against the judges and the presiding judge,’ do you need to hear their names to be able to identify them? No, right?”

Otálora added –in a later interview– that with his project he sought exhaustiveness and certainty, that is, that those who lost knew that they lost in a good way.

De la Mata stressed that accusing without proof is an ineffective practice, to the point that in the jargon of judges this resource is known as shotgun blastthat is, when the dissatisfied person intends that the magistrates should carry out the investigation task.

Fuentes, Valle and President Soto expressed themselves in similar terms. In her speech, Soto stated that in order to annul the vote at a polling station, it is not enough for the dissatisfied party – in these cases the PRD – to mention the alleged irregularity, since they should have presented the full name of those who should not receive the vote, so I do not agree that it should be resolved with common sense, but with a legal sense..

For this reason, the judge pointed out, The appropriate thing is to confirm in its terms all the calculations that have been taken into account, given the ineffectiveness of the arguments asserted in the non-conformity trials..

At the culmination of the debate, Soto delivered the sentence: Unique. The results contained in the district counting minutes of the election for the Presidency of the United Mexican States are confirmed..