Mexico: Tillerson and Democrats agree that Russia will try to influence Mexico’s elections with fake news | Miami Herald

Trump administration officials and Democrats in Congress cannot agree on almost anything, but they are increasingly voicing the same concern when it comes to Latin America: Russia will try to influence the upcoming elections in Mexico, Colombia and other countries in the region. After returning from a five-country Latin American tour, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday: “We see some of Russia’s fingerprints around elections that have occurred in Europe. … We are seeing similar activity in this hemisphere.” He added, “There are a number of important elections in this hemisphere this year.” Tillerson did not cite any specific Latin American country, but Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Maryland — a leading member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — told me in an interview Wednesday that he has no doubt Russian President Vladimir Putin will try to interfere in this year’s elections in Mexico and Colombia.

Mexico: Rubio, Menendez express concern about Russian influence in Mexican election to Tillerson | CBS

President Trump may have declined to criticize Russia for interfering in the U.S. and other elections around the world — but now, amid reports that Russia may be meddling in Latin American elections, too, two bipartisan senators are asking Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to raise this very issue when he travels to Mexico and Latin America later this week. “We write to urge you to raise the importance of strong, independent electoral systems in Mexico and Latin America more broadly,” write Senators Marco Rubio, R-Florida, and Senator Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, wrote in a letter to Tillerson. “We are increasingly concerned about growing efforts to undermine these hard-fought and widely supported advances, particularly those emanating from outside the region.”

Mexico: From Russia with Love: Will Mexico be Putin’s Next Guinea Pig? | Modern Diplomacy

Next July 2018, Mexico will elect over 3000 public posts all over the country, including a new president, members of the Congress, local officials and several state governors. The result of such election will be determinant in Mexico’s future for years to come as it remains unclear which direction the country will take not only domestically, but also regionally and internationally. The so-called leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been the clear front runner of the contested election for several months. This should not come as a surprise as Mexico’s political environment is facing a perplexed field of presidential candidates: José Antonio Meade, the PRI’s candidate, is a well-seasoned public servant with ample experience in public administration, but a very clumsy campaigner that has the difficult task of defending the dire legacy of the incumbent president, Enrique Peña Nieto; Ricardo Anaya, the third candidate is running on a brittle right-left coalition that has been struggling to find its sense of direction.

Mexico: Russia meddling in Mexican election: White House aide McMaster | Reuters

The Russian government has launched a sophisticated campaign to influence Mexico’s 2018 presidential election and stir up division, a senior White House official said in a video clip published by Mexican newspaper Reforma. U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said in a speech last month to the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation that there was already evidence of Russian meddling in Mexican elections set for July. “We’ve seen that this is really a sophisticated effort to polarize democratic societies and pit communities within those societies against each other,” said McMaster in a previously unreported video clip from Dec. 15 that was posted on Twitter by a reporter with Mexican daily newspaper Reforma on Saturday.

Mexico: Two Candidates Declare Victory in Mexico State Election | The Atlantic

In election in Mexico widely seen a test of political sentiment for next year’s presidential run-off will likely head to the court. The race for governor in the State of Mexico was largely a contest between the leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has held on to its seat for about 90 years. While a count of nearly all the votes gives the PRI candidate a narrow three-point lead, widespread accusations of voter fraud and intimidation have called the results into question. For now, both candidates are claiming victory.

Mexico: State election heads to court amid alleged intimidation and vote-buying | The Guardian

A hotly contested state election in Mexico is heading to court after the president’s cousin was declared the victor amid widespread allegations of voter intimidation, vote buying and misuse of public resources. Alfredo del Mazo Maza, the candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), was declared the winner after early results in the state of Mexico gave him a two-point lead over Delfina Gómez of the leftwing National Regeneration party (Morena). But with the vote so close, Morena – led by the populist firebrand Andres Manuel López Obrador– is refusing to accept the initial results. The full count will not be completed before 7 June, after which Morena will almost certainly seek that the election be annulled.

Mexico: Ruling party narrowly fends off leftist in major state election | Reuters

Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) limped to victory in a key state election on Sunday, according to preliminary projections of results that were quickly challenged by the leftist party beaten into second place. The party, however, was heading for a loss in one state and struggling in another. The putative win in the State of Mexico was a close call for President Enrique Pena Nieto’s PRI, which has governed it for nearly nine decades. It will not end the aspirations of leftists led by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, an early favorite for next year’s presidential race. Despite its apparent victory against a party that was only founded three years ago, the PRI still has to battle widespread anger at corruption and rising violent crime under Pena Nieto as the countdown starts for the July 2018 presidential election.

Mexico: Fears grow that Russia could meddle in Mexican election | The Hill

Fears that Russia could meddle in next year’s Mexican presidential election are growing. While there is no hard evidence to suggest that Moscow will be involved in the contest, its effort to disrupt last year’s U.S. election and reports that it is trying to affect elections in Europe have augmented concerns. “Russia meddles in elections, we know that,” said Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. Sen. Armando Ríos Piter of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) told The Hill on Monday that the prospect of Russian interference in Mexican elections “must not be minimized. If [Russia] intervened in the United States, there’s every reason to think that Mexico is a target for attack,” said Ríos Piter, who recently launched an independent presidential bid.

Mexico: Safran Identity & Security to Modernize Mexico’s Biometric Voter ID System | American Security Today

Safran Identity & Security has been awarded a five-year contract by the National Electoral Institute of Mexico (INE) for its multi-biometric identification system and related services. With this new contract, INE confirms its trust in Safran to conform and update the Mexican national voter registry that enables fair and efficient elections. As one of the world’s largest systems of its kind, the multi-biometric identification system ensures each voter has a unique identity by detecting false or double-identity cases in real time. It uses both fingerprint and facial recognition to help ensure that each Mexican citizen is registered only once in the national voter rolls.

Mexico: Ruling party headed for stinging defeat in state elections | The Guardian

Mexican voters have punished the country’s deeply unpopular ruling party in regional elections, with early results suggesting that the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has lost governorships in six states – including four where it had never lost power for more than 80 years. Dogged by allegations of rampant corruption and political thuggery, the PRI lost the Gulf Coast states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas, where kidnapping and extortion have reached alarming levels and drug cartels appear to operate with impunity. The results dealt a heavy blow to Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, putting the opposition National Action Party (PAN) – either alone or in coalition – ahead in seven of the 12 states which held elections on Sunday. “We’ve broken the authoritarian monopoly the PRI has held for more than 86 years,” a buoyant PAN leader Ricardo Anaya told cheering supporters after polls closed on Sunday.

Mexico: Second online leak exposes data for over 2 million Mexicans | Fusion

The personal information of more than 2 million Mexicans was found online last week by the same man who recently discovered a previous data breach exposing the voting registration records of 93.4 million Mexicans. Chris Vickery, an internet data-breach researcher for MacKeeper, told Fusion he found a new database with over 2 million entries through the search engine Shodan.io. He said he found the database through a “random search,” similar to the one that previously lead to his March discovery of an open Amazon server hosting addresses, names and other personal information for more than 70% of Mexico’s population. Vickery said the new database was hosted on a server owned by U.S. company Digital Ocean, which offers online storage and transfer solutions to clients. Vickery says he again alerted Mexico’s electoral authority, INE, which launched an inquiry and confirmed that the voting registry for the northern state of Sinaloa had been exposed online. The database was taken down by Digital Ocean last Friday. The company did not immediately respond to Fusion’s request for comment. Mexican officials have launched an investigation into how the breach happened.

Mexico: Millions of Mexican voter records leaked to Amazon’s cloud, says infosec expert | Ars Technica

A leaked database containing the voting records of millions of Mexican voters has been discovered by a security researcher. Chris Vickery, who works for MacKeeper, said he first spotted the Mexican voters’ roll—containing the records of 87 million voters in Mexico—on April 14. Vickery told Ars that he found the database with Shodan, a search engine that can find pretty much anything connected to the Internet. “The search term that returned this database was just ‘port:27017’ (the default MongoDB port),” Vickery said. “There really was nothing special about the search terms. It was just a stroke of luck that I saw it and followed up.” He added that the database was not accessible over HTTP: “You had to use a MongoDB client, but all you needed was the IP address. There was nothing protecting it at all.”

Mexico: Mexico’s Entire Voter Database Was Leaked to the Internet | Gizmodo

Every modern presidential election is at least in part defined by the cool new media breakthrough of its moment. In 2000, there was email, and by golly was that a big change from the fax. The campaigns could get their messages in front of print and cable news reporters — who could still dominate the campaign narrative — at will, reducing what had been a 24-hour news cycle to an hourly one. The 2004 campaign was the year of the “Web log,” or blog, when mainstream reporters and campaigns officially began losing any control they may have had over political news. Anyone with a computer could weigh in with commentary, news and, often, searing criticism of mainstream reporters and politicians — “Media Gatekeepers be damned!” Then 2008: Facebook made it that much easier for campaigns to reach millions of people directly, further reducing the influence of newspaper, magazine and television journalists. In 2012, Twitter shrank the political news cycle to minutes if not seconds, exponentially adding to the churn of campaign news.

Mexico: Hacker claims he helped Enrique Peña Nieto win Mexican presidential election | The Guardian

A digital dark arts campaign by mercenary hackers helped Enrique Peña Nieto win Mexico’s 2012 presidential election, according to an imprisoned Colombian hacker who says he was involved. Andrés Sepúlveda, an online campaign strategist, claimed he had also helped to manipulate elections in nine countries across Latin America by stealing data, installing malware and creating fake waves of enthusiasm and derision on social media. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, the Colombian – who is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence – boasted of his ability to hack into campaign networks and manipulate opinion. “My job was to do actions of dirty war and psychological operations, black propaganda, rumours – the whole dark side of politics that nobody knows exists but everyone can see,” the 31-year-old told Bloomberg.

Mexico: How to Hack an Election | Bloomberg

It was just before midnight when Enrique Peña Nieto declared victory as the newly elected president of Mexico. Peña Nieto was a lawyer and a millionaire, from a family of mayors and governors. His wife was a telenovela star. He beamed as he was showered with red, green, and white confetti at the Mexico City headquarters of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had ruled for more than 70 years before being forced out in 2000. Returning the party to power on that night in July 2012, Peña Nieto vowed to tame drug violence, fight corruption, and open a more transparent era in Mexican politics. Two thousand miles away, in an apartment in Bogotá’s upscale Chicó Navarra neighborhood, Andrés Sepúlveda sat before six computer screens. Sepúlveda is Colombian, bricklike, with a shaved head, goatee, and a tattoo of a QR code containing an encryption key on the back of his head. On his nape are the words “” and “” stacked atop each other, dark riffs on coding. He was watching a live feed of Peña Nieto’s victory party, waiting for an official declaration of the results. When Peña Nieto won, Sepúlveda began destroying evidence. He drilled holes in flash drives, hard drives, and cell phones, fried their circuits in a microwave, then broke them to shards with a hammer. He shredded documents and flushed them down the toilet and erased servers in Russia and Ukraine rented anonymously with Bitcoins. He was dismantling what he says was a secret history of one of the dirtiest Latin American campaigns in recent memory.

Mexico: Electoral authorities to recount more than half of midterm election votes | VideoNews

Electoral authorities in Mexico announced Wednesday that they are recounting more than half of the ballot boxes from midterm elections held last Sunday. At little more than 89,000 of the more than 149,000 ballot boxes installed will be recounted – about 60 percent of the vote in the congressional election. The National Electoral Institute (INE) Edmundo Jacobo Molina said the entire votes in 17 of the 300 electoral districts will be recounted.

Mexico: Soldiers guard polling stations as protesters burn ballot boxes | The Guardian

Protesters burned ballot boxes in several restive states of southern Mexico on Sunday, in an attempt to disrupt elections seen as a litmus test for President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government. Officials said the vote was proceeding satisfactorily despite “isolated incidents”. Thousands of soldiers and federal police were guarding polling stations where violence and calls for boycotts threatened to mar elections for 500 seats in the lower house of Congress, nine of 31 governorships and hundreds of mayors and local officials. Midterm Mexican elections usually draw a light turnout, but attention was unusually high this time as a loose coalition of radical teachers’ unions and activists vowed to block the vote. They attacked the offices of political parties in Chiapas and Guerrero states and burned ballots in Oaxaca ahead of the vote.

Mexico: Independent Wins Mexican Governorship | Wall Street Journal

A maverick former mayor became Mexico’s first independent candidate to win a governor’s seat, riding a wave of voter anger against the country’s traditional political parties. The news from Sunday’s midterm elections wasn’t all bad for President Enrique Peña Nieto, however: His ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and its allies appeared likely to keep a slim majority in the lower house of Congress, according to early official results. The runaway victory of Jaime “El Bronco” Rodriguez in Nuevo León state, an industrial powerhouse and home to some of Mexico’s biggest corporations, could spark a wave of independent candidacies nationwide for the 2018 presidential vote, a development analysts said might threaten traditional political parties’ grip on power.

Mexico: Violence Looms Over Mexico Elections | Al Jazeera

Mexico is not burning, the country’s Interior Minister Miguel Ángel Osorio assured citizens last month in response to pre-election violence that saw at least three candidates murdered by mid-May. But flaming government buildings and a mounting body count have defied Osorio in the run-up to Sunday’s midterm elections, in which 500 congressional seats and nine governorships are at play. Since Osorio’s declaration, at least four more candidates from various political parties have been gunned down as dozens of criminal gangs coerce candidates in a battle to control local terrain and drug-trafficking routes. At least 20 additional candidates have been intimidated out of the running. The drug-fueled violence has coalesced in recent days with violent protests in Mexico’s southern states, as teachers opposed to education reform, joined by parents of the missing 43 students in Guerrero state, have blocked highways, sabotaged would-be voting stations and burned thousands of ballots. “These are the dirtiest elections since the advent of democracy in Mexico,” Raúl Benítez, a security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told Reuters this week.

Mexico: Candidate killed days before election, thousands of ballots burned | Associated Press

A Mexican congressional candidate was shot dead in a town bordering the capital Tuesday, becoming the fourth politician to be slain ahead of Sunday’s midterm elections. Miguel Angel Luna, a former mayor of Valle de Chalco in the state of Mexico southeast of Mexico City, was attacked by armed men at his campaign offices, according to a statement from his Democratic Revolution Party. Luna died shortly afterward at a hospital. An assistant was wounded. Since March, two candidates running in mayoral races have been slain in the southern states of Michoacan and Guerrero and a third woman who was planning to run in Guerrero was killed.

Mexico: Will ‘El Bronco’ factor drive weary voters to the polls? | Christian Science Monitor

Independents are eligible to run in all states for the first time in June 7 elections. In the border state of Nuevo León, a candidate known as ‘El Bronco’ is energizing voters fed up with scandal-ridden parties. Standing next to a sign that counts down to June 7, Mexico’s election day, campaign worker Pablo Livas says he has been “wishing for another option” in politics for more than a decade. “We haven’t had the government we deserve,” he says. But today, a quick glance at Mr. Livas’s baseball cap reveals his new sense of hope. It reads simply: “I am El Bronco.” Mr. Livas is one of dozens of volunteers bustling around a former car dealership off a tree-lined square in Monterrey this week, intent on hawking Mexico’s newest model in political candidates: the independent.

Mexico: Conservatives keep key state governorship after recount | AFP

Mexico’s conservative opposition retained the governor’s seat in Baja California after the ruling party candidate conceded defeat Saturday following a recount in the politically crucial state. The state bordering the United States was the biggest prize in the July 7 regional elections in 14 Mexican states, with analysts saying its result could sink or save a multi-party reform pact. The candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Fernando Castro Trenti, threw in the towel as the recount gave an edge to National Action Party (PAN) rival Francisco “Kiko” Vega.

Mexico: ‘Dead’ man wins local election in Mexico | The Washington Post

For a dead man, Lenin Carballido apparently ran a pretty good campaign. Last Sunday, nearly three years after he was officially declared dead, Carballido was narrowly elected mayor of San Agustin Amatengo, a small town in Mexico’s Oaxaca state. Carballido faked his own demise in 2010, according to Mexico’s Reforma newspaper, in order to evade charges stemming from a 2004 sexual assault. With police on his trail, Carballido “died” and obtained a coroner’s certificate in September 2010, affirming he had succumbed to “natural causes” after slipping into a diabetic coma. The charges were dropped. Carballido’s resurrection occurred this year when he ran as a local candidate for Mexico’s leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), beating his opponent Sunday by a margin of 11 votes, 515 to 504.

Mexico: Recount begins in key state election | GlobalPost

Authorities began Wednesday to recount ballots in a key gubernatorial election in the Mexican state of Baja California after preliminary results were scrapped due to a technical glitch. The result of the election in the state, which borders the United States, could have an impact on national politics, with analysts saying that a defeat for the conservative National Action Party (PAN) may threaten a multi-party reform pact. Helga Casanova, spokeswoman for the Baja California Electoral Institute, told AFP that the recount may last until Sunday but that it could be completed before then.

Mexico: Some in Mexico smell a rat as vote count halted in Baja California | Los Angeles Times

The election for the prized post of governor of Baja California was thrown into disarray Monday, with both major candidates claiming victory and a preliminary vote count abruptly halted because of what authorities called a math error. The National Action Party, which has held the job since 1989, when it became the first party to defeat the Institutional Revolutionary Party in an election, was ahead by a few percentage points after polls closed Sunday night, officials said. But then, with about 97% of preliminary results tallied in a quick count by a private contractor, officials suddenly halted the count and said results would not be available until Wednesday. The officials cited a problem with algorithms. Some Mexicans smelled a rat. They recalled the notorious presidential election of 1988, when leftist candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas appeared to be defeating Carlos Salinas de Gortari of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. At a certain point, the system conducting the ballot count had what authorities at the time claimed to be a mechanical failure. When the computers came back up, Salinas was declared the victor.

Mexico: Recount in Baja California governor’s race | GlobalPost

Mexican electoral officials Monday declared the preliminary results of a race for governor in Baja California invalid after the ruling party and the opposition both claimed victory in the politically pivotal state. The election in Baja California, which borders the United States, was the biggest prize in regional polls held in 14 states on Sunday after one of the most violent campaign seasons in recent years. Analysts say the result in the border state could affect a national political reform pact.

Mexico: PRI Party Says Runner-up Used Illegal Funds | Latinos Post

Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, winner of the July 1 presidential election, on Monday accused the leftist runner-up of exceeding spending limits and using illegal funds to finance his bid. The allegations were a tit-for-tat exchange after leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador challenged the 3.3 million-vote victory by the PRI’s Enrique Pena Nieto. Lopez Obrador alleges the PRI resorted to money laundering and vote-buying to win. PRI officials fired back on Monday, saying Lopez Obrador’s campaign spent 1.2 billion pesos ($88.65 million) more than was allowed in the presidential campaign.

Mexico: Tens Of Thousands Protest Against New President | Eurasia Review

At least 32,000 protesters marched through Mexico City on Sunday to protest the “imposition” of the new president. They accuse president-elect Enrique Pena Nieto, a member of the old ruling party, of electoral fraud. Protesters have dubbed the country’s TV giant Televisa a “factory of lies.” Demonstrators marching through to capital claimed that Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) won the election by vote-buying and an aggressive PR campaign through major media outlets such as Televisa, which they claim was well paid for positive coverage of Nieto’s presidential campaign. Enrique Pena Nieto, 46, won the election with 38.2 per cent of the vote against 31.6 per cent for the leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Nieto’s victory brought the Institutional Revolutionary Party back to power after being in the opposition for 12 years. The ruling President Felipe Calderon of the conservative National Action Party came in third. Opponents of the victorious candidate demanded urgent domestic reforms.

Mexico: New protest at Pena Nieto election victory | BBC News

Thousands of protesters have been marching through the streets of Mexico City to protest against the official result of this month’s presidential election. The march was called by a new student movement, “Yo soy 132” (I am 132) which accuses the winner, Enrique Pena Nieto, of buying votes. They also say he arranged favourable coverage from main television network, Televisa. Mr Pena Nieto has rejected all charges. “No to fraud,” and “Out with Pena”, shouted the protesters in this latest march against the result of the 1 July vote. “Mexico wants a country that is honest and democratic,” protester Marlem Munoz told the AP news agency. The protest also attracted supporters of the runner up in the poll, left-wing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has refused to accept the official result.