Will AMLO's ploy backfire?

[Gus Van Horn blog]

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I have been less-than-happy and thoroughly unimpressed with the postelection antics of leftist Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who seems to be readying for massive protests or worse based on a carefully-cultivated propaganda campaign aimed to make it appear that Mexico has not run a fair election.

But now, thanks to the Wall Street Journal, I can see a silver lining in AMLO's ploy: if he fails to steal this election and continues to maintain his fiction that Felipe Calderon's victory was fraudulent, might this undermine the confidence of his particular bloc of voters for the next election?

In the U.S. opponents of such anti-fraud measures [unsurprisingly, they're all Democrats. -- ed] as photo ID laws claim they will disenfranchise many voters and reduce voter turnout. But John Lott, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, notes that in the three presidential elections Mexico has conducted since the National Election Commission reformed the election laws "68% of eligible citizens have voted, compared to only 59% in the three elections prior to the rule changes." People are more likely to vote if they believe their ballot will be fairly counted.

I maintain that AMLO is playing with fire and that he should not be underestimated, but it is nice to know that he may do Mexico a favor in the end, by causing the voters who would hurt his country the most to be less likely to show up for future elections.

-- CAV

http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/001804.html