July 1, 2020 • 60 mins
While democracy isn't always predictable, one thing's for sure -- no matter who wins an election, for any party, in any country, some part of the population will claim the game is rigged. That's what happened in Mexico in 1988, when Carlos Salinas de Gortari became president in a hotly-disputed election. For years rumors circulated about the illegal actions that led to this outcome, an opposition parties often accused Gortari's party of rigging the vote. And, in 2004, another person stepped forward to confirm the election was rigged. This wasn't a fringe journalist, either -- it was former President of Mexico Miguel de la Madrid, Gortari's predecessor, who had worked to ensure his chosen candidate 'won' the vote. Tune in to learn more about this strange story ... and what makes it so important today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer,
Paul Mission controlled decades. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. We live in interesting times, gentlemen, and
it's time that we talk about elections. Seems basic stuff, right,
(00:48):
but they're they're they're a big big deal, even when
they are not perfect. Every year, billions upon billions of
dollars go into securing votes, spreading what message, attacking another,
ultimately with the aim of getting quote unquote your candidate
in office. In some countries, like in the Democratic People's
(01:09):
Republic of Korea, elections are more or less rubber stamp
there are formality. In other countries, like the US, they
are hotly contested. They are an industry as much as
a political process. And here in the States it is
virtually a guarantee that no matter who wins the presidential election,
some part of the population is going to say that
(01:30):
it was rigged. I mean, it's crazy if you look
back over the decades. For a long time, for many years,
voters seem to kind of trust the official results, the
political system. But over the recent decades, more and more
people are more and more concerned about the legitimacy of
this process. And part of that is due to the
(01:50):
increased availability of information. Part of it is due to
the spread of new technologies. The best way to look
at it or describe it as this and something I
think we explored a past episode. It is not that
there are more skeletons in democracy's closet. It's just now
we're able to turn on more lights to search for them.
(02:12):
So as we end all of us listening here in
the US approach the presidential elections in November, we were
inspired by this anonymous voicemail to dig into the story
of elections gone wrong. Perhaps it will be a cautionary tale.
So the s from Marco's Mexico and then so final research,
(02:34):
I found out that the Mexican elections were grected by
both parties, and according to what I thought, it was
the good of the nation that that's what they said,
and I was one of that's something that to set
a president in the next questions in the US, not
(02:54):
just to look into that. Thanks. Oh yes, the concept
that's someone somewhere, specifically in Mexico in rigged a democratic
presidential election for the good of the nation. Well, you
were talking about democracy here, right, The concept that each
(03:16):
of us, you, me, everybody, we know that we living
as citizens of a country can make or could make
the best decision for that country about who should lead it. Right,
that's the that's the painted lines on the road faith
thing that we're kind of going into with this one.
(03:37):
Right then, yep, So why should you care about something
that happened decades ago in Mexico? Here are the facts.
Presidential elections in Mexico bear a lot of similarities to
elections in the US, but there are several noticeable differences.
Maybe we can start with the similarities. I'll throw one
(03:58):
out there, Mexico as a president. Yeah, no, that definitely
is the first one. Both countries have huge public campaigns. Uh.
Media blitz is personal appearances, debates, opinion polls, and talking
heads all over the news covering the election. Uh, it's
it's a very very similar experience to what we see
(04:19):
here um during an election cycle. Uh. Not a great show,
but I did. It was the first time I really
saw what this looks like. The show Weeds, there's a
character that becomes the press that is the president of
Mexico and you kind of see a lot of the
pomp and circumstances surrounding that political process. And one of
the later seasons of that show that was pretty maligned,
but it it was, you know, one of the first
(04:40):
times I was aware, Okay, this is how it works there.
It's very similar to how it is here. And as
the caller mentioned, that's also something that you see a
bit of in Narcos, which is a superior show. Yes,
and when you know, when you're thinking about casting your vote,
if you're eighteen years or older, you have likely done
this before you go to designated pulling place, you cast
(05:02):
your ballot, either on paper or electronically, and it is
in all likelihood, well, we know that in Mexico the
ballots were done by hand. It was a paper ballot, uh,
and you know that there's something to that and having
a physical paper thing that then gets counted and then
(05:25):
your wherever you live your local area, all those votes
get counted up, and then all of those votes from
all the different local areas get counted up, and that's
how you win an election or lose one. Yeah. So
so if you were voting in Mexico on election day,
then you were voting in the US on election day,
(05:46):
you odds are you would have kind of a similar experience, right,
especially in as you said, Matt, uh, the days of
paper voting, um back when hanging Chad's meant something other
than you know, people at Abercrombie and which. But there
there are significant differences, and they make up and make
a big difference here in some ways you could argue
(06:08):
these are changes that the U. S could should consider. Uh. First,
Mexico system is younger. The president's powers of office come
from the Revolutionary Constitution of seventeen. So the first quote
unquote modern Mexican president comes to us in seventeen. And
(06:29):
it's a very very big difference. Unlike a president in
the United States, a president in Mexico cannot be re elected.
They cannot be elected twice. You get the one shot. Yeah,
I mean it's a it's a longer term. You know,
we have a four year term for a U S president,
and then of course there's so much that goes into
the idea of being really reelected. And I think, you know,
(06:51):
many folks who criticized the system would argue that that
re election bid largely shapes the policies and the optics
of that term and what is accomplished or not accomplished
their goals, etcetera. So I don't know, I like this
idea of a single six year term and then you're done, um,
and that's called I believe it's called a pronounced sex
senio ben or a six year term. Yeah, that's correct,
(07:13):
sex seniou six year term. The main thing is full
stop you once you were president, even for an abbreviated term,
as like a caretaker of some sort, you can never
run again. That is seen as uh too much power.
There are other differences as well. Partially, one of the
big ones is the day of the week. Here in
(07:34):
the US you vote for people on for some reason, Tuesdays,
and in Mexico elections always occur on Sundays, and I
kind of like the ring of super Sundays over super Tuesdays. Personally,
the alliteration has got that going for it. Yeah. You know,
another major difference here is that in Mexico there was
(07:55):
not a pandemic going on, so people actually went out
physically to vote. They didn't have to get paper ballots
into their house or you know, absentee ballots or do
anything online. Again hampered a bit there by the technological side,
but you had to go physically and do this. Oh
(08:16):
and here's the other big thing that we've talked about
on this show many a time. In the United States,
there are how many presidential parties they can buy for election?
Oh yeah, just two? Just two. In Mexico, on the
other hand, there are three principal political parties. But the
really good thing here, and this is maybe similar to
(08:37):
the US, there are a bunch of you know, smaller
parties in Mexico where if you think about things like
the Green Party or the Libertarian Party. There are multiple
parties here in the US as well, they just don't
have much power when it comes to being able to
secure enough votes to win an election by design. Yeah,
(08:57):
and I believe we've talked about that before or uh,
the the way the funding works is after as a
party in the US, if you get a certain portion
of the vote, then you get federally matched funding of
a certain type. Um, it's it's really, it's tremendously, unreasonably
cartoonishly difficult for a third party to break through in
(09:22):
the US. And again that's not a bug, that's a
feature that's very much by design. But Matt, as you said,
you know there's this plurality of of parties in Mexico.
And this also goes into how the winner of the
election is decided. Right, Yes, it gets a little complicated
(09:44):
when you're thinking about elections in the United States because
we have this thing called the electoral college system. Again,
we have spoken about this before, and it's it's a
bit weird because throughout the electoral college, or in within
this system, each state has a certain number of these votes,
and then when the voting, you know, the popular vote
(10:07):
comes in from all of the citizens within let's say Georgia,
depending on the proportion of you know, popular voting for
candidate A versus candidate B is going to depend how
many electoral college votes actually get cast for for the
president for the presidential election. And now that here's where
it gets really weird. It changes depending on the state
(10:30):
you're in, because some states give all the electoral college
votes to the winner, others give a proportional amount of
votes to the winner UM, and the political parties are
in charge of the electoral college voters. Right and off, Mike,
I was confused, as many of you may may still be,
(10:50):
about the difference between majority and plurality. And Ben made
the great point that plurality and theory UM allows more
cooperation between parties, and our electoral college system is sort
of set up to be incredibly divisive between parties and
the cooperation just isn't a thing, and it's very much
an all or nothing kind of campaign with very little
(11:11):
cooperation across the board. And that's sort of been a
big issue with our government in general. Is this idea
of like, you know, communicating across the aisle or whatever. Um.
So when I first heard this, I was like, this
is interesting. It seems like a better system. Yeah. Yeah,
So that's that's one of the big differences for how
the winner has chosen. In the episode of Highland are
(11:33):
known as presidential elections in Mexico, Uh, the winner is
chosen by plurality. In the US, the winner has chosen
through majority. And as you said, Matt, the electoral college
system is a complicated thing. By design, it does, it
has good intentions, and it functions often to sort of
(11:55):
remove power from from many demographics. Uh. That that's why,
you know, it's weird for outside observers to say, wait,
this candidate lost the popular vote, why are they president?
And like, oh, well, we have this whole other vote.
We don't get to really voted it. But you know
that's that's the one that counts. Um. Now. I know
(12:15):
a lot of people have problems saying that, but there's
not many holes you can poke. And what I just said, Ben,
I love that you mentioned best intentions. I think that's
going to be a big theme in today's episode that
we're going to see popping up and what that actually means. Uh.
And you know where are those intentions coming from? That
can make a huge difference. Let's just continue on this
train of some of the similarities and differences just between
(12:38):
voting and elections in the US versus Mexico. So in
the United States here our elections take place in November.
Our presidential elections at least take place in November, and
then whoever wins goes into office and is inaugurated in
January of the following year. Now in Mexico, the elections
are held in early July and then whoever wins those
(13:00):
elections comes in in December, which is really interesting. It's
like getting a bit of an early start on the
new year um or like being able to establish the
office prior to having to really uh begin executing anything. Uh.
It's like it's like it's like becoming a teacher during
(13:20):
the summer, so you get your you know, you get
to do your prep work before the school year starts,
as opposed to like starting on day one with zero
time to get your ducks in a row. I don't know,
that's sort of a silly comparison, but I think it
holds not bad at all. I think that's a stute
And and the interesting thing here is, remember we said that, uh,
presidents only get to serve one term, so they're already
(13:43):
kind of on the way out, which you know, by
year five, year six, which makes the parties in Mexico,
the ones who got the president elected, even more influential.
And in this country, in Mexico, the sitting president, whoever
they are, whatever their party is, they are banned from
(14:03):
endorsing any candidate and they're banned from campaigning with them,
at least officially. But think about that. Imagine if you
if you live within the U S. Or you you
just watch the news around the time of a U
S presidential election, Imagine how often you see a sitting
president speaking highly of the next person within their party
(14:25):
that's in line to take over. Uh. It's so it's
just such a ubiquitous image that goes out there and
a way to use existing power to to promote the
next person. Well, and I carry so much weight, and
it's just part of the system. The idea of an endorsement,
uh is as as part of the system as you know,
casting your vote. I mean, it's it's it's completely intertwined
(14:48):
with the idea of democracy. No one thinks anything negative
about the idea of an endorsement, right, I guess what
I mean is it's a lever to pull in an
attempt to maintain the power structures for that party. Yeah. Yeah,
And it's one of the biggest it's one of one
of the biggest switches you can pull. In fact, here
in the US, it would be extraordinary, it would be unprecedented. Sorry,
(15:13):
it would be unprecedented for a sitting president not to endorse,
especially you know, at the end of their two terms
and they're not running for reelection. It would be bizarre.
It would be like we're in the upside down for
a sitting president to not endorse the candidate from their party.
And you know, there are there are many other differences,
(15:35):
you know, especially when you get to the congressional voting
levels and nuts and bolts of that, as well as
the physical way voting is carried out. But for what
we were exploring today, that's what you need to know
about the presidency in Mexico, and multiple observers will probably
assure you that the aspects of the voting system in
(15:57):
Mexico are superior to parts of the US voting system.
But let's explore a specific example and why it matters today.
We'll do this after a word from our sponsor. On
July six, nineteen, Mexico held its scheduled election. This was
(16:24):
part of the normal political process. There were three candidates
in the front running, each from one of the three.
You know, primary political party power sources is Carlos Salinas
de Gutari to Mack Cardinas and Manuel Clothier. We're not
native speakers, so apologies for any mispronunciations there. But ultimately
(16:48):
here's what happened. The very end of it is that
the Ministry of the Interior declared Salinas the winner and
said that he had received fifty point seven percent of
the vote, five zero point seven. This was the lowest
winning winning number for a candidate in the entire history
(17:09):
of Mexico's election system since it started in v It
was just like just eke and past the post. You know,
it's like a nose, the nose finished there. Yeah, that
point seven made all the difference, and that was since
the institution of the system in and so that leads
to some questions, Uh, was it rigged? That's sure. As
(17:30):
a narrow margin, it seems like a little bit suspect perhaps,
And it turns out there were some reasons to be
suspicious of this. There were problems with the process from
the offset. Initial results from around the capitol um showed
that Mr. Salinas was losing quite badly to the opposition leader, Mr. Cardenas,
and people started to claim from those early days that
(17:53):
the election was written that Salinas was not the true
presidents And you know, it's something that is is pretty common.
We hear it in this country as well, the idea
that when things are close, that something is afoot, that
there is some sort of foul plays involved. As I said,
plenty of examples in the history of the United States. Uh,
to compare this to So what's different about this case. Well,
(18:17):
the thing that's different is that in this case we're
not just seeing claims that this election was rigged, you
know on internet forums after the fact. We're not looking
at claims from the opposition saying that something was wrong
um or pundits who are going on television and you know,
(18:38):
just to to speak poorly about the person that won. No,
we actually have somebody that came forward uh in two
thousand four men named Miguel Della Madrid, and he confirmed everything.
So the big question is, uh, like can we trust him?
First of all? Who is he? Why does he matter?
(18:58):
And Uh, there's an answer to that because see Mr Madrid,
this was the president of Mexico at the time of
the election in so he was the guy sitting on
the throne when all of this went down, and he
is the guy who has come forward to confirm it.
Here's where it gets crazy. So was this vote compromised?
(19:22):
Years later, the answer seems to be emphatically yes. In
a fairly lengthy autobiography released in two thousand and four something,
it ran about eight hundred fifty pages, as former president
Mr de la Madrid recounted how he and other government
(19:42):
officials who are also associated with his party, the Institutional
Revolutionary Party or p r I as it's called. Uh,
they were terrified that the opposition candidate Cardanis would win
the vote, and so if he if he on the vote,
he would drive their their handpick successor out of office.
(20:05):
But he would do something much more dangerous to them
than that. He would drive the p r I party
out of power, and that meant that they got they
would get their fingers cut out from a lot of
pies that they were in in business and government, likely
in criminal activities. I said what I said, and this
(20:26):
this is terrifying. Uh. He is so candid about it now.
Mr de la Madrid said, when he heard the news
about how bad things were going, when the people were
actually allowed to vote the way they wanted to, he said,
I felt like a bucket of ice water had fallen
on me. I became afraid that the results were similar
(20:47):
across the country and that the p r I would
lose the presidency. Notice he doesn't say the presidential candidate
would lose the presidency. He says the party would lose
the presidency, so E would lose control. Right. So what happened? Yeah,
I mean, as pole results started coming in, the Secretary
(21:07):
of the Interior told him that the initial results were
uh not looking good for the p r I. UM,
and the public demanded, uh these returns, according to Madrid himself, um,
And rather than giving those results, the government lied and
said the computer system had crashed or there was some
(21:28):
kind of fatal error failure. Uh. And the president of
the p r I told Madrid, quote, you have to
proclaim the triumph of the p r I. It is
a tradition that we cannot break without causing great alarm
among the citizens. Yeah. Yeah, Um. It got really weird
(21:54):
because I don't know if anyone listening can remember back
to the two thousand elections when the candidates were George W.
Bush and Al Gore here in the United States, and
there was great confusion in this country when the media,
various media organizations began coming forward and declaring that one
(22:18):
of the two men had won with you know, only
a fairly small or moderate proportion of the votes coming in.
But but all of these media companies were were using
different models to figure out what, well, if we have
this proportion of votes at this time, then we can
declare this. Um. It just became very strange and um
(22:42):
lots of people got it wrong and quickly, but they
made those mistakes early. So it felt like that was
the reality, you know. But that's yeah, that's that's the thing.
Just that we have to remember. There's there's the fog
of war, right, and there's the incompetence that can always occur.
But then also these are commercial media outlets reporting this.
(23:05):
They depend on advertiser dollars, and uh it is um
it is fundamentally true that they are getting pushed behind
you know, behind closed doors. I think of it as like, um,
you were thinking of the right word to like describe shenanigans.
Maybe we call it shenana ghanocity. Right, both the type
(23:26):
of the shenanigan and the direction and speed at which
it travels. You can trace this stuff. There's a reason
that in two thousand, Fox News was telling you something
very different from what CNN or MSNBC or so long,
we're saying, and the same kind of thing, not exactly
the same, but a very similar thing was occurring in
there in Mexico and July during this election where the
(23:49):
opposition parties as there, you know, they've got their own
teams that are looking at results as any and all
communications are happening. And these candidates. So we got the
three candidates, right, one of them is in the p
r I party, and then the other two or not
the opposition candidates to the p r I are coming
forward and saying, hey, we are the winner. Look, it's
(24:11):
clear from the voting that's come in thus far we won,
Thank you very much. So everyone's declaring themselves the winner
at the same time, right, and so what do you do? Uh?
The p r I had to kind of beat them
to the punch. At the very least, and without any
official vote count, the president of the p r I
declared his party, uh the winner. Um. And Mr Madrid
(24:33):
writes again and this tell all kind of bombshell biography
autobiography quote. As in any emergency, we had to act
because the problems were rising fast. There was not a
moment for great meditation. We needed agility in our response
to consolidate. There's this word again that gives me chills,
kind of the triumph of the p R I. Oh
(24:54):
and and and you know, blaming it on computer malfunction
wasn't like some kind of you know reach, I mean
the infrastructure responsible for accounting uh these for these votes
had broken down at least two times. Yeah, under mysterious
circumstances a k A. Cough cough. It was shut down
cough cough at least twice. Um. But technical difficulties are
(25:18):
are a good or a good thing to rely on,
you know. It's the old dog ate my homework of
voting sometimes and and it's it's fascinating because this this
is the point where every minute counts. And you know,
when we talk about the greater good here just the
(25:40):
plan to see for some of our our later conversation.
It's important to note that these these guys were practicing, um,
a psychological problem or fallacy that's common with every every
human being, every every person, which is this idea that
what is what I think is good and is best
(26:02):
for me. Since I'm the main character of my story,
is therefore good for everyone. Like guys, I'm the protagonist,
So what I want is you should automatically want you
should care more about me than you care about yourself
or other people. Nobody ever ultimately forgives other people for
the great sin of not also being them. And in politics,
you know, we see this, we see this writ large.
(26:23):
Like I think it's a really interesting question that line about,
like we need to have the triumph of the p
r I because you know, the implication there is that
we are then guaranteeing stability for the country. That's something
good for things to remain the way they are. Um,
it's it's just interesting. It's not like they're you know,
(26:44):
Monty Burns esque wheedling their fingers around or what is it,
what is it called steepling their fingers and going yeah,
you go, and you know, yes, let's let it burn
and then kick puppies down the streets. They think they're
doing good. It's that's right, And that's something we were
talking about off you know, before we started rolling today.
This idea of the greater good, this idea of for
(27:05):
the good of the nation. Like if you truly believe
your ideological stance, then why wouldn't you think, you know,
keeping your party in power is for the greater good. Uh,
and and it could well be with good intentions and
not some kind of you know, we just want to
screw over the other guy, and and and be for
some sort of nefarious reason. Not to say that there
(27:27):
aren't nefarious reasons, because ideology is a slippery slope and
oftentimes people believe things that are not for the greater good.
But if they do believe it, then that's a powerful
thing belief. So yeah, as far as they were concerned,
this notion of protecting, defending this historical triumph of the
p r I, Uh, what was with the best intentions
and as far as they were concerned for the greater
(27:48):
good of the nation. Yeah, so they did it. They
declared they were the winners, and uh, it kind of worked.
We'll tell you all about it after a word from
our sponsor and we return. So it's not a conspiracy theory.
(28:13):
The acting government in Mexico, despite all the laws against
endorsing or you know, tipping the scales. Uh, he conspired
with his entire crew, his entire cohort, and his colleagues
to rig the election. The world's media was aware of
the controversy at the time. The immediate aftermath of this
(28:34):
is not was not some kind of arcane secret to
international observers. There's a journalist store H. Rowley who was
writing for the Chicago Tribune at the time. Who um.
The article is really interesting to read because Rally spends
the first few paragraphs basically saying, you know, Mexico is
(28:55):
so crooked like ass not a spoiler the the elections
of always like it's it's like part of the culture
of Mexico to to rigg elections, which is, you know,
not not the most helpful way to lead into this story. Yeah.
The quote that he pulls right in that first paragraph
ben of about how this stuff that was happening in
(29:18):
this presidential election would quote make even an old time
Chicago machine politician proud. That's just like whoa exactly Yeah,
and then Rally writes vote rigging is a quote time
honored tradition, but these elections go a step further. And
then we have the quote about, um, the kind of
(29:40):
vocabulary in jargon that sprang up just about this election
and what people were doing kind of the way that
you heard um here and gone terms during U S elections,
like the hanging chats. It's all about the hanging chats.
There were versions of this Mexico. Oh man, yeah, this
is this one really got me. Um. Uh, the idea
(30:04):
of something called vote tacos, which would be a single
ballot folded over itself and then stuffed with twenty other
ballots that are pre marked, pre filled out for the
ruling party candidate um. And then something called turtle ism,
which is the deliberate delaying of the opening of the
polls in order to discourage folks from the opposite voting
(30:26):
party uh to vote because of long lines, hoping to
just kind of have them kind of throw their hands
up and and go home. And then back to what
you mentioned Ben about you know, whether or not they
purposefully shut down some of these digital systems, electronic systems,
this notion of cybernetic fraud, the government's use of computers
(30:46):
to mold election data at will. Um, whether that's just
poll data or actually manipulating the voting record. What do
you think, Ben, combination of the two? I mean, the
worst per snask, But I think we're all we're all
kind of on the on the same page here that
these these tactics, uh, they really happened, right. Um. Now
(31:10):
we have to remember you cybernetic fraud was a very
forward facing term, you know what I mean, like, uh,
that's cyber that's crazy. That's before remember in the nineties
when everything was touted as being digital. This was like
very um, almost space age pleading edge technology. And at
(31:32):
the time, the other political candidates had their you know,
each of whom declared themselves the winners. Uh, they had
their own statements. As widespread voter manipulation was coming out.
Cardenas was National Democratic Front candidate, said that if if
any of this stuff was true, and if it was
all true, it would technically be the equivalent of a
(31:55):
coup data And he's not wrong, he's tam correct. And
there were all kinds of allegations coming forward from varying
segments of the population in Mexico who who had very
specific allegations. And you know, if you look at if
you look at that Chicago Tribune article that we mentioned above,
(32:18):
you can see this stuff actually written out. Um. They
would come forward with things like what was known as carouseling,
or was known as a carousel, where groups of p
r I officials, government employees would go together in a group.
It would be pre arranged with the people running the
polling place, and they would vote once at that polling place,
(32:39):
let's call it A. Then they would go together and
vote at polling place B, and the people running that
polling station would let them into And it was just
kind of a known thing that these this crew was
coming through to vote multiple times. And if I'm not mistaken,
that's similar to some of the Tammany Hall kind of
corrupt voting practices that that we we talked about earlier
(33:01):
in terms of like a lot of similarities between the
two UM and and one way that this was enabled
was the use of this particular ink, like you know
how like if you take your kid to chuck E cheese,
they make you get a stamp on your hand and
then one on your kid's hand, and then when you leave,
they got to compare the stamps. And maybe people who
don't have kids don't know this, but it's the thing
I was impressed when I first experienced it. Uh. And
(33:22):
that way you can't take someone else's kid. UM. In
that same way, they had a system of using this
inc that wouldn't wash off UM to prove that you've
only voted once. UM. And someone named Catalina praisera Um
who was a housewife and National Action representative who was
a pole observer. Uh noticed that they wouldn't let them
(33:43):
use their own ink. They they would supply this ink
that would wash off more easily so that they could,
you know, get get away with voting more than once.
Even though to your point, then there certainly were observers
that were in on it as well. Um. And then
you had something called alchemy laboratories, which sounds desperately sinister, right,
Gotta love the name alchemy laboratories. Um describes the practice
(34:09):
of creating secret computer terminals two to function as an
access point, a weak link in the transit from a
voting station to the government tabulation center, so you could
pop in from you know, from point A to point B.
You could pop in in that space between them, and
(34:31):
then you could alter things to make it a little
bit more pro p r I or a lot of
bit more pro p r I. And these are these
are just three of the specific allegations. These are three
that were later backed up with very compelling evidence. But
despite all of this, the political machine that the p
(34:52):
r I had built rolled on, who was undeterred Salina's
became the president of Mexico and a world media eventually
shifted it's ever mercurial focus to other affairs. Will wait,
you might be saying, isn't there evidence of this? Now? Uh? Yeah,
(35:13):
I mean the president at the time fully confessed to
to what happened and to the fact that this was rigged.
But in the in the years after that election, something
very interesting happened. There's of course internal investigation and so on.
And as these concerns arising, they won't go away. Domestically
(35:34):
in Mexico. Just three years later in the Mexican Congress
orders all of the physical ballots of the election to
be burned. So if you heard that right, Yeah, they
literally took all the actual votes without recounting them or
examining them or so on, and they set them aflame.
(35:58):
So there goes the proof. It's incredible because we all know,
everyone listening knows that when voting is electronic, no matter
how it's done, that information, that data, no matter how encrypted,
can be manipulated. If you are intelligent and have trained
yourself and our good with systems, you can manipulate that information.
(36:23):
And now, especially if it's basic information coming from paper ballots,
that's just recording how many people voted for who, and
you've got three names on that ballot, and people are
using ink or you know, um, Chad's they're not using Chad,
They're they're using ink in this system, at least from
what I understand. Um, if you're getting rid of the
(36:47):
paper ballots, the only thing the actual receipts. If you
get rid of those, you can never prove that the
data on a computer that's stored there is going to
be real or not. Or it's certainly much more difficult.
I mean there are like computer forensic specialists that can
you know, see if things were you know, there's there's
certain like little markers in way. But yes, well in
(37:10):
the end, in the end, it's whatever was inserted, whatever
was put into that machine the first time, right, I mean,
that's what you're going to find. And even if you
even if it's been manipulated, I'm just saying, like, that's
the best you can do now is get the initial
It's the very definition of a paper trail, right, I mean,
it gives you something physical that you can look at
(37:31):
and say, see, we we have them here, but they
didn't have them because they burned them. Uh. Well, and
they did it before their party even had the potential
of losing power. Right, speak about that the midway point,
it's three years into a six year term. There are
three more years that will pass, uh, in which this
(37:53):
new cycle can deviate. But surely you might be asking,
surely there were consequences. I mean, come on, this is
a huge country. This is a country that is at
the forefront of so many things. Surely someone is going
to you know, at least get scapegoated, right like whenever
(38:16):
whenever politicians get caught here. Uh, it's kind of a
hazard of the job working as an underling that one
day you may be on that stone chair. One day
you may be the sacrifice at the altar to save
your boss. But get this, there were no legal ramifications,
which is none even even when even in two thousand four,
(38:36):
two thousand five, when Madrid comes out and says, yeah
we rigged it. Uh, his his old colleagues turned on
him and they were like, ah did we though. Yeah,
they completely uh discredited him, um characterized him as being
some kind of bitter old man, possibly even use some
little ages tactics against him because he was seventy one
(38:58):
at the time. But yeah, they also trotted out the
old trustee that his comments were being taken out of context,
which is basically like gas lighting the public saying no, no, no, no,
he said what he said, but you don't understand what
he really meant, and then didn't give him the opportunity
(39:18):
to respond or you know, just kind of buried it.
Uh So it really kind of makes you wonder, what,
what's what went on in subsequent elections, What's what's going
on right now. It's kind of like when Coda and
O'Brien keeps trying to say that he said he takes
he steals children's shoes and nails them to walls of
(39:39):
his closet. Was a figure of speech, right, It's exactly
the same thing. Then the worst Easter egg we've never known.
I love that you put it in though, because I
just heard him talking about that. Well, it can be
used in a different way to like, you know, with
our current president, he'll make comments they'll be taking a
certain way, and then he'll come I can try to
(40:00):
pick up the pieces by saying, oh, no, you took
what I set out of context, and then but ultimately
it's a it's a form of spin that he's doing
himself with this megaphone that he has in in the
form of Twitter and this direct line to the public,
so he's not even filtering it through PR. He himself
is saying no, no, no, you don't understand what I meant.
I meant this, And it's a way of potentially being
able to say whatever he wants and then have an
(40:23):
out later. So this isn't quite the same thing, but
it's it's it's not that far off. I would just
say it's astonishing too to me, not to make it personal,
but it's it is astonishing that this is the first
I'm hearing about this. When our our friend left that voicemail,
it was the first time I had learned about the
(40:44):
presidential election. Perhaps because I didn't take enough government classes
or something and my educational pursuits, but maybe I would
have heard about it. But dang, I wonder how many
people out there listening right now knew about this, because
it feels surreal that this could happen. It's also it's
massively disquieting to see how many contemporaneous quotations exist from
(41:12):
voters in Mexico at the time, who are saying, look,
the PR I is gonna do something. They're gonna win.
I'm gonna vote against them, but they're gonna win. And
it turned out that they were right. And I think
you guys are making fantastic points. It makes you wonder
about other elections. We don't talk about it in this
country as often as we should. We're very fortunate. I
(41:32):
think we talked about a little bit when it's monologueing
on a on a previous episode about North Korea. But
the peaceful passage of power, the peaceful transfer is an
enormously vulnerable time for any country, and we have as
a country in the US. Then very very fortunate. These things.
You know, uh, these things end in war more often
(41:57):
than you know. A lot of people would become infortable believing.
That's because democracy is not a static institution. The House
is haunted, and it always has been. It's never been
a safe institution either. As a resident of any country
that allows voting, you're probably often told that you're right
to do so, right, but it's not quite your right,
(42:19):
it's your responsibility. And there are a lot of people
who say, well, I don't vote because it doesn't matter
because you know, whomever I vote for, there's always gonna
be something like the p R I and they're always
gonna come in and they're always gonna win, right, um,
But that does not absolve you of that responsibility. That's
like saying, you know what, I've got up this morning,
(42:40):
I'm not gonna make my bed because at some point
in the future I'll just have to make it again.
That's not the point. The point of this, the difference
between making your bed and voting. I guess I'm gonna
arride this horrible analogy into the sunset is it is
a Voting is a responsibility that numerous powers wherever you live,
(43:01):
numerous powers do not want to see you exercise this
this thing. Why why ask yourself, like, why why does
the Mexican election three decades more than three decades from now?
Why does it seem like a parable Why does it
seem like a cautionary tale? Why is election Day not
a holiday in the United States? Why does voting seem
(43:22):
I don't know about you, guys. I I think we're
you know, we're We're not the dullest crayons in the box, right,
we can figure stuff out. But the rules for voting
are so byzantine. There's so many opportunities for things to
go wrong. Is it by accident and competence? Is it
by design? Like? What I mean, why do you guys
(43:43):
think this is the case. Why is voting not a
holiday here? Well? I don't know then, but you got
me thinking, I really need to go make up my
bed as soon as we finish this podcast. Uh, both
as a real thing that I should do, and as
is your analogy, which holds true, because you're right, it's
it's amazing thing. You can't just lean on your laurels
and be like, Okay, it worked once. Now I don't
(44:04):
ever have to do it again. Okay, I did it once.
You gotta police at yourself. You have to be aware,
you have to pay attention and not settle for anything
less than openness of democracy. Uh. And it's not always
easy to do. And we were living in a time
where it feels like it's maybe even slipping away even more.
But I think you know, I would just join you,
you both of you gentlemen and urging folks, just to
(44:27):
pay attention and and don't don't give up in the
process just because you don't think it's working for you
all the time, because it might not happen overnight, but
it's definitely something that you have to kind of keep
keep at and keep after UH to to make work
or to at least exercise you're part of it working. Okay,
I got two things, just the concept that we outlined
earlier in the episode that in Mexico you vote on
(44:50):
a Sunday, and in the United States you vote on
a Tuesday. And we live in countries that are capitalist
and based on people working during work days a lot
of times to make money to then pay taxes to
then support the government, and you vote on the people
that you want to run the government. But just for
(45:11):
us to do it on a Tuesday versus even if
it's not a holiday. Ben, if it's just on a weekend,
I can see that being very beneficial for a large
portion of people. However, if it's on a weekend, then
all of the people who work in restaurants, all the
people you know who work in UH service industry and
(45:32):
hospitality people, I mean, they're not going to have an
easier time voting if it's on a Sunday. So basically,
you've kind of like reconvinced me that it absolutely should
be a holiday. The way we have bank holidays or
any other holiday where that's all you do that day.
That's that's it. And there's a lot being made of
the legality or illegality of mail in votes. I think
(45:55):
that was a big thing that you know, was fact
checked by Twitter that no, it is perfectly legal to
mail in your vote um and to do an absentee ballot, etcetera.
And you know, the very fact that there's rhetoric around
trying to demonize the practice of doing a mail in
ballot seems to be part of this whole rigging the
(46:15):
system situation. I don't know what do you guys think
about that. It's been a big topic of debate here
in the United States of of late. The thing is
part of it goes back to, I would say, kind
of decentralization of the voting process, the fact that it's
state by state, the fact that some people who can
vote in one state, felons for example, may not be
(46:36):
able to vote in another. Those kind of things inherently
mean that the circumstances state by state are not equal
in this regard. And when they are not equal in
this regard, then that means that people are I wouldn't
say necessarily being disenfranchised, but people are not getting the
(46:57):
same fair shot at voting and making voice heard that
people in other states are. Um. This, I mean, this
is profoundly important. We do have systems like early voting, right,
absentee voting, and so on. Um. The primary objection now,
the cause, the jour as we approach November in this
country seems to be in this cycle. The idea of
(47:20):
mail in voting. Um. The opponents of it, correct me
if I'm wrong here. The opponents of it say it
provides an opportunity for voter fraud, right, Um. And then
the proponents of it say, uh, you know, I would
like to vote without having to risk getting fired. Legally,
(47:41):
in this country, an employer does have to allow you
to vote, to go vote, but how on earth is
that enforced? Right? And when uh, you know there there's
also a pandemic going on. So if you're you can
ask people to risk some time out of their day
to vote as an educated voter. But if you are
(48:03):
putting them in a position where you're forcing them to
expose themselves to a potentially fatal infection, I mean, that's
that's not something. There's not anything in the constitution that
says you must risk your life to vote UM, so
it could lead to self selecting disenfranchisement. I mean the
one to your Pointnal, the big thing about mail in voting.
(48:27):
The two big ideas at loggerheads here are the idea
that UM voting is important in this country and we
should therefore make it as easy as possible for as
many people as possible to voice their opinion UM. And
then the thing opposed to that as the idea that
(48:47):
someone will make what thousands or hundreds of thousands of
UH fake ballots and put those in. But that would
take I think we walked through it before. That would
take so much work for such a small return. You
would have to be super strategic about it. You would
have to I don't know. It seems I'm not gonna
(49:09):
say it's made up concerned because there are cases of
voter fraud, but it seems to be a concern that
is being exploited and misrepresented in the discourse today. Well,
it's also like not not you know, let's go beyond
disenfranchisement to disenchanted nests. I guess if you're already feeling,
you know, like why bother? And then you're inconvenience to
(49:31):
the point of feeling like you have to go out
to the polls and risk your life and your health
to vote. You're probably gonna stay home. And that's something
that I think is being exploited as well, that level
of disenchantedness towards the process and this pandemic and potentially
getting an outcome by saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no,
mail ends you gotta go, you gotta go in person.
(49:52):
When the president himself didn't do that. He mailed his
vote in uh and drove past the precinct where he
could have voted in person. Would has been a historical
thing that presidents have done uh and made a you know,
big kind of pr move out of it. For whatever
the reasoning behind it is, it is a thing that
we've always remember. I always remember seeing the president go
to the ballot box and vote for himself. Yeah, that's
(50:15):
the thing. Maybe if you are to to that enormously
important point about disenchantment, maybe if you are disillusioned disenchanted, well,
first off, you have every right to be. UM. Maybe
if you are think about this. I I once tried
to explain to someone who is very anti voting. UM
(50:36):
once tried to explain the most realistic on the ground, selfish,
self motivated reason to vote, even if you don't care
about other people. Here's where you vote. It is you
buying the right to complain for another four years. It
is you you now by because you voted because in
(50:59):
some minute, infinitesimal way, you you tried to do something,
so now you can talk about it. If you didn't
try to vote, then uh, why why are you? Why
are you pretending like you care in year two? You
know what I mean? Because you didn't care that day
you had the jets to do something about whatever your
(51:21):
problem is. And and that that sounds cold and brutal, um,
but it but it is true, and it should be
a motivating factor. And of course voting is like the
bottom of the barrel kind of thing. You know, you
can get active with your community. You can vote in
municipal elections, you can make your voice heard at town
hall meetings. But of course then it becomes an issue
of time, right because to your point, Matt, there is
(51:44):
a capitalist society. Um. Eventually, your employer is probably gonna say, look,
you can't keep going to these controller meetings. You have
a job. What even as a controller. I'm kidding it's
a cliche at this point, and not know what a
controller is. It's just the most esoteric sounding job. It's
something to do with like it's like being a treasurer.
(52:04):
I don't really know. Still, Oh no, and I figured
this out. It's a um it's an accountant. It was
a financial thing, got it? Yeah? Man, those are important,
uh I gosh, okay, just and we're talking about all
this stuff. I would say, go find the old clip
(52:27):
of George Carlin talking about choosing whether or not to
stay at home and family friendly, show pleasure oneself versus
going in and voting. H just choosing between those two things.
I would listen to that clip from George Carlin. It's
a it's pretty, it's it's yeah, it's kind of Weben
(52:49):
was saying, basically, Um, so what I would what I
would just note here is that this thing that occurred
in in Mexico where an election was just kind of stolen,
just it just kind of happened through official terms by
(53:11):
people in power. You know. The question for me then,
is well, what happens to the to those people who
were in power when this is just kind of an
open thing now You can look at articles on univision
dot com and you can see this election being talked about.
You can see it being talked about with relation to
the most recent presidential election that occurred in I believe,
(53:35):
where one of the officials man named Manuel Bartlett, who
was a part of that election. He has actually been
appointed to one of the you know, at one of
the higher administration levels within the sitting government by the
then president elect Um. I believe it's Obra Door who
(53:57):
was elected. So you can see where even if you're
an official who took part in something like this, if
you're still on the same team as the people that
maintained power, you're going to get to continue playing. Basically, Yeah, hey,
you know what that reminds me of such a tangent.
One of the guys you got locked up for the
(54:17):
Enron scandal is not only out of prison, but he's
getting back into the energy sector in a big way.
He's super pumped about it. And is he gonna do asteroids?
Oh god, who knows? Manuel Bartlett, though, I'm so glad
you mentioned that specific name. He was the he was
the president of the Federal Election Commission in the person
(54:39):
and kind of like Harold's the official decision, and uh
then he was appointed you know, fast forward, um, as
he said, he was appointed the director of Mexico's Federal
Electricity Commission. So you know, he's not handling elections anymore
at least, But computers need to like tricity, that's where
(55:01):
you can manipulate the vote. So is this is this
a case of UM one bad institutional apple? Where is
this a cautionary tale that isn't told as often as
it should be? Is this just one of many examples?
If you are someone in the US who does vote,
(55:27):
you know, regardless of what degree you find yourself participating, UM,
then now is the time to go go check your
voter registration because depending on what state you live in,
you might be surprised to find whether or not you're
on the rolls. This happens any number of times for
(55:48):
any number of reasons. Not again, not all you know,
supervillain conspiratorial stuff. Uh, some just pure incompetence, or some
just the hazard of a machine with mill ends of
moving parts. But it is it is in your best
interest because even if you don't think your vote counts,
you don't want to be someone on social media in
(56:10):
like twenty two talking about something. And so when ask
you if you voted and you say didn't, because that
will remove what people will see as your right to
have an opinion. And we're not talking about the three
or four of us. Are you listening now, We're talking
about the people you talk to later. Put your money
(56:30):
where your mouth is, that's right. And if you do
want to find out what your registration is or what
your status is as a voter within the US, if
you have a search engine, you can find it very easily.
There will be a dot gov website for your state.
In all likelihood there's one for our state and several
others that I just spot checked, where you can just
type in a few things about your uh, your info.
(56:54):
It's usually your date of birth, your name, and where
you are, what county you're in, and you'll be able
to find it. So we want to know what you think,
not just about elections in general, not just about the
future of elections in your country abroad. We'd like to
hear specific examples from your neck of the global woods.
(57:15):
What what what shenanigans were about? Uh? You know, what
what specific instances do you recall and were there were
there specific concrete ramifications. Because the people who stole an
election in Mexico not too long ago, why possibly, while
us and your fellow listeners were alive, those people got
(57:39):
away with it. Those people got away with stealing an election. Uh.
And that's that's just baffling, that's uh. I I would
assume it's more difficult than say, stealing a candy bar
or a car. Um. But you know, maybe we just
have to give it the old college go. And what
what happens when you like, let's say this is acknowled unequivocally,
(58:00):
we find this out about our government, this happened. Do
you render every decision the illegitimate government made over the
course of their tenure like null and void? Like there's
there's really no historical precedent for this. Uh. And their
choice in Mexico was just to pretend it never happened. Well,
Uni Univision makes just a really good point of what
(58:22):
really occurred when they stole the election. The p r
I is that they pushed back by six years the
true in statement of democracy within Mexico basically is what
they're saying. Um. And that maybe that's not the full truth,
because who's to say the elections prior to that. We're
also stolen in some way, but but still it kind
(58:45):
of gives you that feeling. Then well, if that one
wasn't real and we were all made to believe that
it was real, then there's no way to prove that
the other ones were right or legit. It's just an
e roading of trust, I think, and we want to
know what you think. You can right to us in
all the usual places on social media's or where conspiracy
stuff conspiracy stuff show. You can join our Facebook group
(59:07):
here's where it gets crazy. You can also should the
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am at how now Noel Brown just hanging out on
Instagram actively. I'm on Twitter, but I just kind of
lark so I don't even throw that one out there.
(59:29):
And I'm met Frederick Underscore. I heard. I think maybe
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can give us a call. Our number is one eight
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You'll let you know what to do, UM, and of
(59:51):
what you do like leave that message, it will be
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conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't
(01:00:31):
want you to know. Is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer,
Paul Mission controlled decades. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. We live in interesting times, gentlemen, and
it's time that we talk about elections. Seems basic stuff, right,
(00:48):
but they're they're they're a big big deal, even when
they are not perfect. Every year, billions upon billions of
dollars go into securing votes, spreading what message, attacking another,
ultimately with the aim of getting quote unquote your candidate
in office. In some countries, like in the Democratic People's
(01:09):
Republic of Korea, elections are more or less rubber stamp
there are formality. In other countries, like the US, they
are hotly contested. They are an industry as much as
a political process. And here in the States it is
virtually a guarantee that no matter who wins the presidential election,
some part of the population is going to say that
(01:30):
it was rigged. I mean, it's crazy if you look
back over the decades. For a long time, for many years,
voters seem to kind of trust the official results, the
political system. But over the recent decades, more and more
people are more and more concerned about the legitimacy of
this process. And part of that is due to the
(01:50):
increased availability of information. Part of it is due to
the spread of new technologies. The best way to look
at it or describe it as this and something I
think we explored a past episode. It is not that
there are more skeletons in democracy's closet. It's just now
we're able to turn on more lights to search for them.
(02:12):
So as we end all of us listening here in
the US approach the presidential elections in November, we were
inspired by this anonymous voicemail to dig into the story
of elections gone wrong. Perhaps it will be a cautionary tale.
So the s from Marco's Mexico and then so final research,
(02:34):
I found out that the Mexican elections were grected by
both parties, and according to what I thought, it was
the good of the nation that that's what they said,
and I was one of that's something that to set
a president in the next questions in the US, not
(02:54):
just to look into that. Thanks. Oh yes, the concept
that's someone somewhere, specifically in Mexico in rigged a democratic
presidential election for the good of the nation. Well, you
were talking about democracy here, right, The concept that each
(03:16):
of us, you, me, everybody, we know that we living
as citizens of a country can make or could make
the best decision for that country about who should lead it. Right,
that's the that's the painted lines on the road faith
thing that we're kind of going into with this one.
(03:37):
Right then, yep, So why should you care about something
that happened decades ago in Mexico? Here are the facts.
Presidential elections in Mexico bear a lot of similarities to
elections in the US, but there are several noticeable differences.
Maybe we can start with the similarities. I'll throw one
(03:58):
out there, Mexico as a president. Yeah, no, that definitely
is the first one. Both countries have huge public campaigns. Uh.
Media blitz is personal appearances, debates, opinion polls, and talking
heads all over the news covering the election. Uh, it's
it's a very very similar experience to what we see
(04:19):
here um during an election cycle. Uh. Not a great show,
but I did. It was the first time I really
saw what this looks like. The show Weeds, there's a
character that becomes the press that is the president of
Mexico and you kind of see a lot of the
pomp and circumstances surrounding that political process. And one of
the later seasons of that show that was pretty maligned,
but it it was, you know, one of the first
(04:40):
times I was aware, Okay, this is how it works there.
It's very similar to how it is here. And as
the caller mentioned, that's also something that you see a
bit of in Narcos, which is a superior show. Yes,
and when you know, when you're thinking about casting your vote,
if you're eighteen years or older, you have likely done
this before you go to designated pulling place, you cast
(05:02):
your ballot, either on paper or electronically, and it is
in all likelihood, well, we know that in Mexico the
ballots were done by hand. It was a paper ballot, uh,
and you know that there's something to that and having
a physical paper thing that then gets counted and then
(05:25):
your wherever you live your local area, all those votes
get counted up, and then all of those votes from
all the different local areas get counted up, and that's
how you win an election or lose one. Yeah. So
so if you were voting in Mexico on election day,
then you were voting in the US on election day,
(05:46):
you odds are you would have kind of a similar experience, right,
especially in as you said, Matt, uh, the days of
paper voting, um back when hanging Chad's meant something other
than you know, people at Abercrombie and which. But there
there are significant differences, and they make up and make
a big difference here in some ways you could argue
(06:08):
these are changes that the U. S could should consider. Uh. First,
Mexico system is younger. The president's powers of office come
from the Revolutionary Constitution of seventeen. So the first quote
unquote modern Mexican president comes to us in seventeen. And
(06:29):
it's a very very big difference. Unlike a president in
the United States, a president in Mexico cannot be re elected.
They cannot be elected twice. You get the one shot. Yeah,
I mean it's a it's a longer term. You know,
we have a four year term for a U S president,
and then of course there's so much that goes into
the idea of being really reelected. And I think, you know,
(06:51):
many folks who criticized the system would argue that that
re election bid largely shapes the policies and the optics
of that term and what is accomplished or not accomplished
their goals, etcetera. So I don't know, I like this
idea of a single six year term and then you're done, um,
and that's called I believe it's called a pronounced sex
senio ben or a six year term. Yeah, that's correct,
(07:13):
sex seniou six year term. The main thing is full
stop you once you were president, even for an abbreviated term,
as like a caretaker of some sort, you can never
run again. That is seen as uh too much power.
There are other differences as well. Partially, one of the
big ones is the day of the week. Here in
(07:34):
the US you vote for people on for some reason, Tuesdays,
and in Mexico elections always occur on Sundays, and I
kind of like the ring of super Sundays over super Tuesdays. Personally,
the alliteration has got that going for it. Yeah. You know,
another major difference here is that in Mexico there was
(07:55):
not a pandemic going on, so people actually went out
physically to vote. They didn't have to get paper ballots
into their house or you know, absentee ballots or do
anything online. Again hampered a bit there by the technological side,
but you had to go physically and do this. Oh
(08:16):
and here's the other big thing that we've talked about
on this show many a time. In the United States,
there are how many presidential parties they can buy for election?
Oh yeah, just two? Just two. In Mexico, on the
other hand, there are three principal political parties. But the
really good thing here, and this is maybe similar to
(08:37):
the US, there are a bunch of you know, smaller
parties in Mexico where if you think about things like
the Green Party or the Libertarian Party. There are multiple
parties here in the US as well, they just don't
have much power when it comes to being able to
secure enough votes to win an election by design. Yeah,
(08:57):
and I believe we've talked about that before or uh,
the the way the funding works is after as a
party in the US, if you get a certain portion
of the vote, then you get federally matched funding of
a certain type. Um, it's it's really, it's tremendously, unreasonably
cartoonishly difficult for a third party to break through in
(09:22):
the US. And again that's not a bug, that's a
feature that's very much by design. But Matt, as you said,
you know there's this plurality of of parties in Mexico.
And this also goes into how the winner of the
election is decided. Right, Yes, it gets a little complicated
(09:44):
when you're thinking about elections in the United States because
we have this thing called the electoral college system. Again,
we have spoken about this before, and it's it's a
bit weird because throughout the electoral college, or in within
this system, each state has a certain number of these votes,
and then when the voting, you know, the popular vote
(10:07):
comes in from all of the citizens within let's say Georgia,
depending on the proportion of you know, popular voting for
candidate A versus candidate B is going to depend how
many electoral college votes actually get cast for for the
president for the presidential election. And now that here's where
it gets really weird. It changes depending on the state
(10:30):
you're in, because some states give all the electoral college
votes to the winner, others give a proportional amount of
votes to the winner UM, and the political parties are
in charge of the electoral college voters. Right and off, Mike,
I was confused, as many of you may may still be,
(10:50):
about the difference between majority and plurality. And Ben made
the great point that plurality and theory UM allows more
cooperation between parties, and our electoral college system is sort
of set up to be incredibly divisive between parties and
the cooperation just isn't a thing, and it's very much
an all or nothing kind of campaign with very little
(11:11):
cooperation across the board. And that's sort of been a
big issue with our government in general. Is this idea
of like, you know, communicating across the aisle or whatever. Um.
So when I first heard this, I was like, this
is interesting. It seems like a better system. Yeah. Yeah,
So that's that's one of the big differences for how
the winner has chosen. In the episode of Highland are
(11:33):
known as presidential elections in Mexico, Uh, the winner is
chosen by plurality. In the US, the winner has chosen
through majority. And as you said, Matt, the electoral college
system is a complicated thing. By design, it does, it
has good intentions, and it functions often to sort of
(11:55):
remove power from from many demographics. Uh. That that's why,
you know, it's weird for outside observers to say, wait,
this candidate lost the popular vote, why are they president?
And like, oh, well, we have this whole other vote.
We don't get to really voted it. But you know
that's that's the one that counts. Um. Now. I know
(12:15):
a lot of people have problems saying that, but there's
not many holes you can poke. And what I just said, Ben,
I love that you mentioned best intentions. I think that's
going to be a big theme in today's episode that
we're going to see popping up and what that actually means. Uh.
And you know where are those intentions coming from? That
can make a huge difference. Let's just continue on this
train of some of the similarities and differences just between
(12:38):
voting and elections in the US versus Mexico. So in
the United States here our elections take place in November.
Our presidential elections at least take place in November, and
then whoever wins goes into office and is inaugurated in
January of the following year. Now in Mexico, the elections
are held in early July and then whoever wins those
(13:00):
elections comes in in December, which is really interesting. It's
like getting a bit of an early start on the
new year um or like being able to establish the
office prior to having to really uh begin executing anything. Uh.
It's like it's like it's like becoming a teacher during
(13:20):
the summer, so you get your you know, you get
to do your prep work before the school year starts,
as opposed to like starting on day one with zero
time to get your ducks in a row. I don't know,
that's sort of a silly comparison, but I think it
holds not bad at all. I think that's a stute
And and the interesting thing here is, remember we said that, uh,
presidents only get to serve one term, so they're already
(13:43):
kind of on the way out, which you know, by
year five, year six, which makes the parties in Mexico,
the ones who got the president elected, even more influential.
And in this country, in Mexico, the sitting president, whoever
they are, whatever their party is, they are banned from
(14:03):
endorsing any candidate and they're banned from campaigning with them,
at least officially. But think about that. Imagine if you
if you live within the U S. Or you you
just watch the news around the time of a U
S presidential election, Imagine how often you see a sitting
president speaking highly of the next person within their party
(14:25):
that's in line to take over. Uh. It's so it's
just such a ubiquitous image that goes out there and
a way to use existing power to to promote the
next person. Well, and I carry so much weight, and
it's just part of the system. The idea of an endorsement,
uh is as as part of the system as you know,
casting your vote. I mean, it's it's it's completely intertwined
(14:48):
with the idea of democracy. No one thinks anything negative
about the idea of an endorsement, right, I guess what
I mean is it's a lever to pull in an
attempt to maintain the power structures for that party. Yeah. Yeah,
And it's one of the biggest it's one of one
of the biggest switches you can pull. In fact, here
in the US, it would be extraordinary, it would be unprecedented. Sorry,
(15:13):
it would be unprecedented for a sitting president not to endorse,
especially you know, at the end of their two terms
and they're not running for reelection. It would be bizarre.
It would be like we're in the upside down for
a sitting president to not endorse the candidate from their party.
And you know, there are there are many other differences,
(15:35):
you know, especially when you get to the congressional voting
levels and nuts and bolts of that, as well as
the physical way voting is carried out. But for what
we were exploring today, that's what you need to know
about the presidency in Mexico, and multiple observers will probably
assure you that the aspects of the voting system in
(15:57):
Mexico are superior to parts of the US voting system.
But let's explore a specific example and why it matters today.
We'll do this after a word from our sponsor. On
July six, nineteen, Mexico held its scheduled election. This was
(16:24):
part of the normal political process. There were three candidates
in the front running, each from one of the three.
You know, primary political party power sources is Carlos Salinas
de Gutari to Mack Cardinas and Manuel Clothier. We're not
native speakers, so apologies for any mispronunciations there. But ultimately
(16:48):
here's what happened. The very end of it is that
the Ministry of the Interior declared Salinas the winner and
said that he had received fifty point seven percent of
the vote, five zero point seven. This was the lowest
winning winning number for a candidate in the entire history
(17:09):
of Mexico's election system since it started in v It
was just like just eke and past the post. You know,
it's like a nose, the nose finished there. Yeah, that
point seven made all the difference, and that was since
the institution of the system in and so that leads
to some questions, Uh, was it rigged? That's sure. As
(17:30):
a narrow margin, it seems like a little bit suspect perhaps,
And it turns out there were some reasons to be
suspicious of this. There were problems with the process from
the offset. Initial results from around the capitol um showed
that Mr. Salinas was losing quite badly to the opposition leader, Mr. Cardenas,
and people started to claim from those early days that
(17:53):
the election was written that Salinas was not the true
presidents And you know, it's something that is is pretty common.
We hear it in this country as well, the idea
that when things are close, that something is afoot, that
there is some sort of foul plays involved. As I said,
plenty of examples in the history of the United States. Uh,
to compare this to So what's different about this case. Well,
(18:17):
the thing that's different is that in this case we're
not just seeing claims that this election was rigged, you
know on internet forums after the fact. We're not looking
at claims from the opposition saying that something was wrong
um or pundits who are going on television and you know,
(18:38):
just to to speak poorly about the person that won. No,
we actually have somebody that came forward uh in two
thousand four men named Miguel Della Madrid, and he confirmed everything.
So the big question is, uh, like can we trust him?
First of all? Who is he? Why does he matter?
(18:58):
And Uh, there's an answer to that because see Mr Madrid,
this was the president of Mexico at the time of
the election in so he was the guy sitting on
the throne when all of this went down, and he
is the guy who has come forward to confirm it.
Here's where it gets crazy. So was this vote compromised?
(19:22):
Years later, the answer seems to be emphatically yes. In
a fairly lengthy autobiography released in two thousand and four something,
it ran about eight hundred fifty pages, as former president
Mr de la Madrid recounted how he and other government
(19:42):
officials who are also associated with his party, the Institutional
Revolutionary Party or p r I as it's called. Uh,
they were terrified that the opposition candidate Cardanis would win
the vote, and so if he if he on the vote,
he would drive their their handpick successor out of office.
(20:05):
But he would do something much more dangerous to them
than that. He would drive the p r I party
out of power, and that meant that they got they
would get their fingers cut out from a lot of
pies that they were in in business and government, likely
in criminal activities. I said what I said, and this
(20:26):
this is terrifying. Uh. He is so candid about it now.
Mr de la Madrid said, when he heard the news
about how bad things were going, when the people were
actually allowed to vote the way they wanted to, he said,
I felt like a bucket of ice water had fallen
on me. I became afraid that the results were similar
(20:47):
across the country and that the p r I would
lose the presidency. Notice he doesn't say the presidential candidate
would lose the presidency. He says the party would lose
the presidency, so E would lose control. Right. So what happened? Yeah,
I mean, as pole results started coming in, the Secretary
(21:07):
of the Interior told him that the initial results were
uh not looking good for the p r I. UM,
and the public demanded, uh these returns, according to Madrid himself, um,
And rather than giving those results, the government lied and
said the computer system had crashed or there was some
(21:28):
kind of fatal error failure. Uh. And the president of
the p r I told Madrid, quote, you have to
proclaim the triumph of the p r I. It is
a tradition that we cannot break without causing great alarm
among the citizens. Yeah. Yeah, Um. It got really weird
(21:54):
because I don't know if anyone listening can remember back
to the two thousand elections when the candidates were George W.
Bush and Al Gore here in the United States, and
there was great confusion in this country when the media,
various media organizations began coming forward and declaring that one
(22:18):
of the two men had won with you know, only
a fairly small or moderate proportion of the votes coming in.
But but all of these media companies were were using
different models to figure out what, well, if we have
this proportion of votes at this time, then we can
declare this. Um. It just became very strange and um
(22:42):
lots of people got it wrong and quickly, but they
made those mistakes early. So it felt like that was
the reality, you know. But that's yeah, that's that's the thing.
Just that we have to remember. There's there's the fog
of war, right, and there's the incompetence that can always occur.
But then also these are commercial media outlets reporting this.
(23:05):
They depend on advertiser dollars, and uh it is um
it is fundamentally true that they are getting pushed behind
you know, behind closed doors. I think of it as like, um,
you were thinking of the right word to like describe shenanigans.
Maybe we call it shenana ghanocity. Right, both the type
(23:26):
of the shenanigan and the direction and speed at which
it travels. You can trace this stuff. There's a reason
that in two thousand, Fox News was telling you something
very different from what CNN or MSNBC or so long,
we're saying, and the same kind of thing, not exactly
the same, but a very similar thing was occurring in
there in Mexico and July during this election where the
(23:49):
opposition parties as there, you know, they've got their own
teams that are looking at results as any and all
communications are happening. And these candidates. So we got the
three candidates, right, one of them is in the p
r I party, and then the other two or not
the opposition candidates to the p r I are coming
forward and saying, hey, we are the winner. Look, it's
(24:11):
clear from the voting that's come in thus far we won,
Thank you very much. So everyone's declaring themselves the winner
at the same time, right, and so what do you do? Uh?
The p r I had to kind of beat them
to the punch. At the very least, and without any
official vote count, the president of the p r I
declared his party, uh the winner. Um. And Mr Madrid
(24:33):
writes again and this tell all kind of bombshell biography
autobiography quote. As in any emergency, we had to act
because the problems were rising fast. There was not a
moment for great meditation. We needed agility in our response
to consolidate. There's this word again that gives me chills,
kind of the triumph of the p R I. Oh
(24:54):
and and and you know, blaming it on computer malfunction
wasn't like some kind of you know reach, I mean
the infrastructure responsible for accounting uh these for these votes
had broken down at least two times. Yeah, under mysterious
circumstances a k A. Cough cough. It was shut down
cough cough at least twice. Um. But technical difficulties are
(25:18):
are a good or a good thing to rely on,
you know. It's the old dog ate my homework of
voting sometimes and and it's it's fascinating because this this
is the point where every minute counts. And you know,
when we talk about the greater good here just the
(25:40):
plan to see for some of our our later conversation.
It's important to note that these these guys were practicing, um,
a psychological problem or fallacy that's common with every every
human being, every every person, which is this idea that
what is what I think is good and is best
(26:02):
for me. Since I'm the main character of my story,
is therefore good for everyone. Like guys, I'm the protagonist,
So what I want is you should automatically want you
should care more about me than you care about yourself
or other people. Nobody ever ultimately forgives other people for
the great sin of not also being them. And in politics,
you know, we see this, we see this writ large.
(26:23):
Like I think it's a really interesting question that line about,
like we need to have the triumph of the p
r I because you know, the implication there is that
we are then guaranteeing stability for the country. That's something
good for things to remain the way they are. Um,
it's it's just interesting. It's not like they're you know,
(26:44):
Monty Burns esque wheedling their fingers around or what is it,
what is it called steepling their fingers and going yeah,
you go, and you know, yes, let's let it burn
and then kick puppies down the streets. They think they're
doing good. It's that's right, And that's something we were
talking about off you know, before we started rolling today.
This idea of the greater good, this idea of for
(27:05):
the good of the nation. Like if you truly believe
your ideological stance, then why wouldn't you think, you know,
keeping your party in power is for the greater good. Uh,
and and it could well be with good intentions and
not some kind of you know, we just want to
screw over the other guy, and and and be for
some sort of nefarious reason. Not to say that there
(27:27):
aren't nefarious reasons, because ideology is a slippery slope and
oftentimes people believe things that are not for the greater good.
But if they do believe it, then that's a powerful
thing belief. So yeah, as far as they were concerned,
this notion of protecting, defending this historical triumph of the
p r I, Uh, what was with the best intentions
and as far as they were concerned for the greater
(27:48):
good of the nation. Yeah, so they did it. They
declared they were the winners, and uh, it kind of worked.
We'll tell you all about it after a word from
our sponsor and we return. So it's not a conspiracy theory.
(28:13):
The acting government in Mexico, despite all the laws against
endorsing or you know, tipping the scales. Uh, he conspired
with his entire crew, his entire cohort, and his colleagues
to rig the election. The world's media was aware of
the controversy at the time. The immediate aftermath of this
(28:34):
is not was not some kind of arcane secret to
international observers. There's a journalist store H. Rowley who was
writing for the Chicago Tribune at the time. Who um.
The article is really interesting to read because Rally spends
the first few paragraphs basically saying, you know, Mexico is
(28:55):
so crooked like ass not a spoiler the the elections
of always like it's it's like part of the culture
of Mexico to to rigg elections, which is, you know,
not not the most helpful way to lead into this story. Yeah.
The quote that he pulls right in that first paragraph
ben of about how this stuff that was happening in
(29:18):
this presidential election would quote make even an old time
Chicago machine politician proud. That's just like whoa exactly Yeah,
and then Rally writes vote rigging is a quote time
honored tradition, but these elections go a step further. And
then we have the quote about, um, the kind of
(29:40):
vocabulary in jargon that sprang up just about this election
and what people were doing kind of the way that
you heard um here and gone terms during U S elections,
like the hanging chats. It's all about the hanging chats.
There were versions of this Mexico. Oh man, yeah, this
is this one really got me. Um. Uh, the idea
(30:04):
of something called vote tacos, which would be a single
ballot folded over itself and then stuffed with twenty other
ballots that are pre marked, pre filled out for the
ruling party candidate um. And then something called turtle ism,
which is the deliberate delaying of the opening of the
polls in order to discourage folks from the opposite voting
(30:26):
party uh to vote because of long lines, hoping to
just kind of have them kind of throw their hands
up and and go home. And then back to what
you mentioned Ben about you know, whether or not they
purposefully shut down some of these digital systems, electronic systems,
this notion of cybernetic fraud, the government's use of computers
(30:46):
to mold election data at will. Um, whether that's just
poll data or actually manipulating the voting record. What do
you think, Ben, combination of the two? I mean, the
worst per snask, But I think we're all we're all
kind of on the on the same page here that
these these tactics, uh, they really happened, right. Um. Now
(31:10):
we have to remember you cybernetic fraud was a very
forward facing term, you know what I mean, like, uh,
that's cyber that's crazy. That's before remember in the nineties
when everything was touted as being digital. This was like
very um, almost space age pleading edge technology. And at
(31:32):
the time, the other political candidates had their you know,
each of whom declared themselves the winners. Uh, they had
their own statements. As widespread voter manipulation was coming out.
Cardenas was National Democratic Front candidate, said that if if
any of this stuff was true, and if it was
all true, it would technically be the equivalent of a
(31:55):
coup data And he's not wrong, he's tam correct. And
there were all kinds of allegations coming forward from varying
segments of the population in Mexico who who had very
specific allegations. And you know, if you look at if
you look at that Chicago Tribune article that we mentioned above,
(32:18):
you can see this stuff actually written out. Um. They
would come forward with things like what was known as carouseling,
or was known as a carousel, where groups of p
r I officials, government employees would go together in a group.
It would be pre arranged with the people running the
polling place, and they would vote once at that polling place,
(32:39):
let's call it A. Then they would go together and
vote at polling place B, and the people running that
polling station would let them into And it was just
kind of a known thing that these this crew was
coming through to vote multiple times. And if I'm not mistaken,
that's similar to some of the Tammany Hall kind of
corrupt voting practices that that we we talked about earlier
(33:01):
in terms of like a lot of similarities between the
two UM and and one way that this was enabled
was the use of this particular ink, like you know
how like if you take your kid to chuck E cheese,
they make you get a stamp on your hand and
then one on your kid's hand, and then when you leave,
they got to compare the stamps. And maybe people who
don't have kids don't know this, but it's the thing
I was impressed when I first experienced it. Uh. And
(33:22):
that way you can't take someone else's kid. UM. In
that same way, they had a system of using this
inc that wouldn't wash off UM to prove that you've
only voted once. UM. And someone named Catalina praisera Um
who was a housewife and National Action representative who was
a pole observer. Uh noticed that they wouldn't let them
(33:43):
use their own ink. They they would supply this ink
that would wash off more easily so that they could,
you know, get get away with voting more than once.
Even though to your point, then there certainly were observers
that were in on it as well. Um. And then
you had something called alchemy laboratories, which sounds desperately sinister, right,
Gotta love the name alchemy laboratories. Um describes the practice
(34:09):
of creating secret computer terminals two to function as an
access point, a weak link in the transit from a
voting station to the government tabulation center, so you could
pop in from you know, from point A to point B.
You could pop in in that space between them, and
(34:31):
then you could alter things to make it a little
bit more pro p r I or a lot of
bit more pro p r I. And these are these
are just three of the specific allegations. These are three
that were later backed up with very compelling evidence. But
despite all of this, the political machine that the p
(34:52):
r I had built rolled on, who was undeterred Salina's
became the president of Mexico and a world media eventually
shifted it's ever mercurial focus to other affairs. Will wait,
you might be saying, isn't there evidence of this? Now? Uh? Yeah,
(35:13):
I mean the president at the time fully confessed to
to what happened and to the fact that this was rigged.
But in the in the years after that election, something
very interesting happened. There's of course internal investigation and so on.
And as these concerns arising, they won't go away. Domestically
(35:34):
in Mexico. Just three years later in the Mexican Congress
orders all of the physical ballots of the election to
be burned. So if you heard that right, Yeah, they
literally took all the actual votes without recounting them or
examining them or so on, and they set them aflame.
(35:58):
So there goes the proof. It's incredible because we all know,
everyone listening knows that when voting is electronic, no matter
how it's done, that information, that data, no matter how encrypted,
can be manipulated. If you are intelligent and have trained
yourself and our good with systems, you can manipulate that information.
(36:23):
And now, especially if it's basic information coming from paper ballots,
that's just recording how many people voted for who, and
you've got three names on that ballot, and people are
using ink or you know, um, Chad's they're not using Chad,
They're they're using ink in this system, at least from
what I understand. Um, if you're getting rid of the
(36:47):
paper ballots, the only thing the actual receipts. If you
get rid of those, you can never prove that the
data on a computer that's stored there is going to
be real or not. Or it's certainly much more difficult.
I mean there are like computer forensic specialists that can
you know, see if things were you know, there's there's
certain like little markers in way. But yes, well in
(37:10):
the end, in the end, it's whatever was inserted, whatever
was put into that machine the first time, right, I mean,
that's what you're going to find. And even if you
even if it's been manipulated, I'm just saying, like, that's
the best you can do now is get the initial
It's the very definition of a paper trail, right, I mean,
it gives you something physical that you can look at
(37:31):
and say, see, we we have them here, but they
didn't have them because they burned them. Uh. Well, and
they did it before their party even had the potential
of losing power. Right, speak about that the midway point,
it's three years into a six year term. There are
three more years that will pass, uh, in which this
(37:53):
new cycle can deviate. But surely you might be asking,
surely there were consequences. I mean, come on, this is
a huge country. This is a country that is at
the forefront of so many things. Surely someone is going
to you know, at least get scapegoated, right like whenever
(38:16):
whenever politicians get caught here. Uh, it's kind of a
hazard of the job working as an underling that one
day you may be on that stone chair. One day
you may be the sacrifice at the altar to save
your boss. But get this, there were no legal ramifications,
which is none even even when even in two thousand four,
(38:36):
two thousand five, when Madrid comes out and says, yeah
we rigged it. Uh, his his old colleagues turned on
him and they were like, ah did we though. Yeah,
they completely uh discredited him, um characterized him as being
some kind of bitter old man, possibly even use some
little ages tactics against him because he was seventy one
(38:58):
at the time. But yeah, they also trotted out the
old trustee that his comments were being taken out of context,
which is basically like gas lighting the public saying no, no, no, no,
he said what he said, but you don't understand what
he really meant, and then didn't give him the opportunity
(39:18):
to respond or you know, just kind of buried it.
Uh So it really kind of makes you wonder, what,
what's what went on in subsequent elections, What's what's going
on right now. It's kind of like when Coda and
O'Brien keeps trying to say that he said he takes
he steals children's shoes and nails them to walls of
(39:39):
his closet. Was a figure of speech, right, It's exactly
the same thing. Then the worst Easter egg we've never known.
I love that you put it in though, because I
just heard him talking about that. Well, it can be
used in a different way to like, you know, with
our current president, he'll make comments they'll be taking a
certain way, and then he'll come I can try to
(40:00):
pick up the pieces by saying, oh, no, you took
what I set out of context, and then but ultimately
it's a it's a form of spin that he's doing
himself with this megaphone that he has in in the
form of Twitter and this direct line to the public,
so he's not even filtering it through PR. He himself
is saying no, no, no, you don't understand what I meant.
I meant this, And it's a way of potentially being
able to say whatever he wants and then have an
(40:23):
out later. So this isn't quite the same thing, but
it's it's it's not that far off. I would just
say it's astonishing too to me, not to make it personal,
but it's it is astonishing that this is the first
I'm hearing about this. When our our friend left that voicemail,
it was the first time I had learned about the
(40:44):
presidential election. Perhaps because I didn't take enough government classes
or something and my educational pursuits, but maybe I would
have heard about it. But dang, I wonder how many
people out there listening right now knew about this, because
it feels surreal that this could happen. It's also it's
massively disquieting to see how many contemporaneous quotations exist from
(41:12):
voters in Mexico at the time, who are saying, look,
the PR I is gonna do something. They're gonna win.
I'm gonna vote against them, but they're gonna win. And
it turned out that they were right. And I think
you guys are making fantastic points. It makes you wonder
about other elections. We don't talk about it in this
country as often as we should. We're very fortunate. I
(41:32):
think we talked about a little bit when it's monologueing
on a on a previous episode about North Korea. But
the peaceful passage of power, the peaceful transfer is an
enormously vulnerable time for any country, and we have as
a country in the US. Then very very fortunate. These things.
You know, uh, these things end in war more often
(41:57):
than you know. A lot of people would become infortable believing.
That's because democracy is not a static institution. The House
is haunted, and it always has been. It's never been
a safe institution either. As a resident of any country
that allows voting, you're probably often told that you're right
to do so, right, but it's not quite your right,
(42:19):
it's your responsibility. And there are a lot of people
who say, well, I don't vote because it doesn't matter
because you know, whomever I vote for, there's always gonna
be something like the p R I and they're always
gonna come in and they're always gonna win, right, um,
But that does not absolve you of that responsibility. That's
like saying, you know what, I've got up this morning,
(42:40):
I'm not gonna make my bed because at some point
in the future I'll just have to make it again.
That's not the point. The point of this, the difference
between making your bed and voting. I guess I'm gonna
arride this horrible analogy into the sunset is it is
a Voting is a responsibility that numerous powers wherever you live,
(43:01):
numerous powers do not want to see you exercise this
this thing. Why why ask yourself, like, why why does
the Mexican election three decades more than three decades from now?
Why does it seem like a parable Why does it
seem like a cautionary tale? Why is election Day not
a holiday in the United States? Why does voting seem
(43:22):
I don't know about you, guys. I I think we're
you know, we're We're not the dullest crayons in the box, right,
we can figure stuff out. But the rules for voting
are so byzantine. There's so many opportunities for things to
go wrong. Is it by accident and competence? Is it
by design? Like? What I mean, why do you guys
(43:43):
think this is the case. Why is voting not a
holiday here? Well? I don't know then, but you got
me thinking, I really need to go make up my
bed as soon as we finish this podcast. Uh, both
as a real thing that I should do, and as
is your analogy, which holds true, because you're right, it's
it's amazing thing. You can't just lean on your laurels
and be like, Okay, it worked once. Now I don't
(44:04):
ever have to do it again. Okay, I did it once.
You gotta police at yourself. You have to be aware,
you have to pay attention and not settle for anything
less than openness of democracy. Uh. And it's not always
easy to do. And we were living in a time
where it feels like it's maybe even slipping away even more.
But I think you know, I would just join you,
you both of you gentlemen and urging folks, just to
(44:27):
pay attention and and don't don't give up in the
process just because you don't think it's working for you
all the time, because it might not happen overnight, but
it's definitely something that you have to kind of keep
keep at and keep after UH to to make work
or to at least exercise you're part of it working. Okay,
I got two things, just the concept that we outlined
earlier in the episode that in Mexico you vote on
(44:50):
a Sunday, and in the United States you vote on
a Tuesday. And we live in countries that are capitalist
and based on people working during work days a lot
of times to make money to then pay taxes to
then support the government, and you vote on the people
that you want to run the government. But just for
(45:11):
us to do it on a Tuesday versus even if
it's not a holiday. Ben, if it's just on a weekend,
I can see that being very beneficial for a large
portion of people. However, if it's on a weekend, then
all of the people who work in restaurants, all the
people you know who work in UH service industry and
(45:32):
hospitality people, I mean, they're not going to have an
easier time voting if it's on a Sunday. So basically,
you've kind of like reconvinced me that it absolutely should
be a holiday. The way we have bank holidays or
any other holiday where that's all you do that day.
That's that's it. And there's a lot being made of
the legality or illegality of mail in votes. I think
(45:55):
that was a big thing that you know, was fact
checked by Twitter that no, it is perfectly legal to
mail in your vote um and to do an absentee ballot, etcetera.
And you know, the very fact that there's rhetoric around
trying to demonize the practice of doing a mail in
ballot seems to be part of this whole rigging the
(46:15):
system situation. I don't know what do you guys think
about that. It's been a big topic of debate here
in the United States of of late. The thing is
part of it goes back to, I would say, kind
of decentralization of the voting process, the fact that it's
state by state, the fact that some people who can
vote in one state, felons for example, may not be
(46:36):
able to vote in another. Those kind of things inherently
mean that the circumstances state by state are not equal
in this regard. And when they are not equal in
this regard, then that means that people are I wouldn't
say necessarily being disenfranchised, but people are not getting the
(46:57):
same fair shot at voting and making voice heard that
people in other states are. Um. This, I mean, this
is profoundly important. We do have systems like early voting, right,
absentee voting, and so on. Um. The primary objection now,
the cause, the jour as we approach November in this
country seems to be in this cycle. The idea of
(47:20):
mail in voting. Um. The opponents of it, correct me
if I'm wrong here. The opponents of it say it
provides an opportunity for voter fraud, right, Um. And then
the proponents of it say, uh, you know, I would
like to vote without having to risk getting fired. Legally,
(47:41):
in this country, an employer does have to allow you
to vote, to go vote, but how on earth is
that enforced? Right? And when uh, you know there there's
also a pandemic going on. So if you're you can
ask people to risk some time out of their day
to vote as an educated voter. But if you are
(48:03):
putting them in a position where you're forcing them to
expose themselves to a potentially fatal infection, I mean, that's
that's not something. There's not anything in the constitution that
says you must risk your life to vote UM, so
it could lead to self selecting disenfranchisement. I mean the
one to your Pointnal, the big thing about mail in voting.
(48:27):
The two big ideas at loggerheads here are the idea
that UM voting is important in this country and we
should therefore make it as easy as possible for as
many people as possible to voice their opinion UM. And
then the thing opposed to that as the idea that
(48:47):
someone will make what thousands or hundreds of thousands of
UH fake ballots and put those in. But that would
take I think we walked through it before. That would
take so much work for such a small return. You
would have to be super strategic about it. You would
have to I don't know. It seems I'm not gonna
(49:09):
say it's made up concerned because there are cases of
voter fraud, but it seems to be a concern that
is being exploited and misrepresented in the discourse today. Well,
it's also like not not you know, let's go beyond
disenfranchisement to disenchanted nests. I guess if you're already feeling,
you know, like why bother? And then you're inconvenience to
(49:31):
the point of feeling like you have to go out
to the polls and risk your life and your health
to vote. You're probably gonna stay home. And that's something
that I think is being exploited as well, that level
of disenchantedness towards the process and this pandemic and potentially
getting an outcome by saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no,
mail ends you gotta go, you gotta go in person.
(49:52):
When the president himself didn't do that. He mailed his
vote in uh and drove past the precinct where he
could have voted in person. Would has been a historical
thing that presidents have done uh and made a you know,
big kind of pr move out of it. For whatever
the reasoning behind it is, it is a thing that
we've always remember. I always remember seeing the president go
to the ballot box and vote for himself. Yeah, that's
(50:15):
the thing. Maybe if you are to to that enormously
important point about disenchantment, maybe if you are disillusioned disenchanted, well,
first off, you have every right to be. UM. Maybe
if you are think about this. I I once tried
to explain to someone who is very anti voting. UM
(50:36):
once tried to explain the most realistic on the ground, selfish,
self motivated reason to vote, even if you don't care
about other people. Here's where you vote. It is you
buying the right to complain for another four years. It
is you you now by because you voted because in
(50:59):
some minute, infinitesimal way, you you tried to do something,
so now you can talk about it. If you didn't
try to vote, then uh, why why are you? Why
are you pretending like you care in year two? You
know what I mean? Because you didn't care that day
you had the jets to do something about whatever your
(51:21):
problem is. And and that that sounds cold and brutal, um,
but it but it is true, and it should be
a motivating factor. And of course voting is like the
bottom of the barrel kind of thing. You know, you
can get active with your community. You can vote in
municipal elections, you can make your voice heard at town
hall meetings. But of course then it becomes an issue
of time, right because to your point, Matt, there is
(51:44):
a capitalist society. Um. Eventually, your employer is probably gonna say, look,
you can't keep going to these controller meetings. You have
a job. What even as a controller. I'm kidding it's
a cliche at this point, and not know what a
controller is. It's just the most esoteric sounding job. It's
something to do with like it's like being a treasurer.
(52:04):
I don't really know. Still, Oh no, and I figured
this out. It's a um it's an accountant. It was
a financial thing, got it? Yeah? Man, those are important,
uh I gosh, okay, just and we're talking about all
this stuff. I would say, go find the old clip
(52:27):
of George Carlin talking about choosing whether or not to
stay at home and family friendly, show pleasure oneself versus
going in and voting. H just choosing between those two things.
I would listen to that clip from George Carlin. It's
a it's pretty, it's it's yeah, it's kind of Weben
(52:49):
was saying, basically, Um, so what I would what I
would just note here is that this thing that occurred
in in Mexico where an election was just kind of stolen,
just it just kind of happened through official terms by
(53:11):
people in power. You know. The question for me then,
is well, what happens to the to those people who
were in power when this is just kind of an
open thing now You can look at articles on univision
dot com and you can see this election being talked about.
You can see it being talked about with relation to
the most recent presidential election that occurred in I believe,
(53:35):
where one of the officials man named Manuel Bartlett, who
was a part of that election. He has actually been
appointed to one of the you know, at one of
the higher administration levels within the sitting government by the
then president elect Um. I believe it's Obra Door who
(53:57):
was elected. So you can see where even if you're
an official who took part in something like this, if
you're still on the same team as the people that
maintained power, you're going to get to continue playing. Basically, Yeah, hey,
you know what that reminds me of such a tangent.
One of the guys you got locked up for the
(54:17):
Enron scandal is not only out of prison, but he's
getting back into the energy sector in a big way.
He's super pumped about it. And is he gonna do asteroids?
Oh god, who knows? Manuel Bartlett, though, I'm so glad
you mentioned that specific name. He was the he was
the president of the Federal Election Commission in the person
(54:39):
and kind of like Harold's the official decision, and uh
then he was appointed you know, fast forward, um, as
he said, he was appointed the director of Mexico's Federal
Electricity Commission. So you know, he's not handling elections anymore
at least, But computers need to like tricity, that's where
(55:01):
you can manipulate the vote. So is this is this
a case of UM one bad institutional apple? Where is
this a cautionary tale that isn't told as often as
it should be? Is this just one of many examples?
If you are someone in the US who does vote,
(55:27):
you know, regardless of what degree you find yourself participating, UM,
then now is the time to go go check your
voter registration because depending on what state you live in,
you might be surprised to find whether or not you're
on the rolls. This happens any number of times for
(55:48):
any number of reasons. Not again, not all you know,
supervillain conspiratorial stuff. Uh, some just pure incompetence, or some
just the hazard of a machine with mill ends of
moving parts. But it is it is in your best
interest because even if you don't think your vote counts,
you don't want to be someone on social media in
(56:10):
like twenty two talking about something. And so when ask
you if you voted and you say didn't, because that
will remove what people will see as your right to
have an opinion. And we're not talking about the three
or four of us. Are you listening now, We're talking
about the people you talk to later. Put your money
(56:30):
where your mouth is, that's right. And if you do
want to find out what your registration is or what
your status is as a voter within the US, if
you have a search engine, you can find it very easily.
There will be a dot gov website for your state.
In all likelihood there's one for our state and several
others that I just spot checked, where you can just
type in a few things about your uh, your info.
(56:54):
It's usually your date of birth, your name, and where
you are, what county you're in, and you'll be able
to find it. So we want to know what you think,
not just about elections in general, not just about the
future of elections in your country abroad. We'd like to
hear specific examples from your neck of the global woods.
(57:15):
What what what shenanigans were about? Uh? You know, what
what specific instances do you recall and were there were
there specific concrete ramifications. Because the people who stole an
election in Mexico not too long ago, why possibly, while
us and your fellow listeners were alive, those people got
(57:39):
away with it. Those people got away with stealing an election. Uh.
And that's that's just baffling, that's uh. I I would
assume it's more difficult than say, stealing a candy bar
or a car. Um. But you know, maybe we just
have to give it the old college go. And what
what happens when you like, let's say this is acknowled unequivocally,
(58:00):
we find this out about our government, this happened. Do
you render every decision the illegitimate government made over the
course of their tenure like null and void? Like there's
there's really no historical precedent for this. Uh. And their
choice in Mexico was just to pretend it never happened. Well,
Uni Univision makes just a really good point of what
(58:22):
really occurred when they stole the election. The p r
I is that they pushed back by six years the
true in statement of democracy within Mexico basically is what
they're saying. Um. And that maybe that's not the full truth,
because who's to say the elections prior to that. We're
also stolen in some way, but but still it kind
(58:45):
of gives you that feeling. Then well, if that one
wasn't real and we were all made to believe that
it was real, then there's no way to prove that
the other ones were right or legit. It's just an
e roading of trust, I think, and we want to
know what you think. You can right to us in
all the usual places on social media's or where conspiracy
stuff conspiracy stuff show. You can join our Facebook group
(59:07):
here's where it gets crazy. You can also should the
spirit so move you find us as individuals. I am
at Ben Bowlen hs W on Twitter. I am in
a burst of creativity at Ben Bolan on Instagram. I
am at how now Noel Brown just hanging out on
Instagram actively. I'm on Twitter, but I just kind of
lark so I don't even throw that one out there.
(59:29):
And I'm met Frederick Underscore. I heard. I think maybe
you'll find it or not. And if you don't want
to use Instagram or any of those other socials, you
can give us a call. Our number is one eight
three three st d w y t K. Give us
a call. You can leave a message. You'll hear Ben's voice,
You'll let you know what to do, UM, and of
(59:51):
what you do like leave that message, it will be
about three minutes. Then you can call back again if
you want to. If that wasn't enough time, UM, feel
free to give us a call anytime. It just goes
straight to voicemail and all three of us have access
to it, so we will be listening. And if you
don't want to do any of that stuff, why not
just send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't
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