Mexico's leading leftist presidential candidate asked the nation's top electoral court to order a ballot-by-ballot recount, with party representatives turning over nine boxes of evidence of alleged fraud and dirty campaign practices in the July 2 election, the closest presidential race ever.
The 900-page claim filed late on Sunday alleged that some polling places had more votes than registered voters; that the ruling party funneled government money to Felipe Calderon's campaign, exceeding spending limits; and that a software program was used to skew initial vote-count reports.
"We have proof that basic rules were flagrantly violated," said Ricardo Monreal, a representative for candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who was not at the filing.
Mexico's Federal Electoral Court will review the case, which includes videos, campaign propaganda and electoral documents. The court has until Sept. 6 to declare a winner.
The legal challenge came a day after Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor, held a mammoth rally in Mexico City's historic center and called on his followers to help overturn Calderon's narrow victory.
Electoral officials say the conservative candidate beat Lopez Obrador by less than 244,000 votes in the July 2 election -- or a margin of just 0.6 percent.
Lopez Obrador isn't seeking to annul the July 2 election, but to force authorities to conduct a manual recount of all 41 million ballots.
"This was a very irregular election and we are asking that they count vote by vote to legitimize the president-elect," Gerardo Fernandez, a spokesman for Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party, said on Sunday. "We won't recognize Calderon's triumph unless they legitimize the election."
Fox has denied interfering in the elections, and election monitors from the EU said they found no irregularities in the vote count.
But fraud allegations strike a sensitive nerve with many Mexicans. They question whether Mexico has overcome decades of institutional corruption that favored the PRI for 71 years until it lost the presidency to Fox in 2000.
Lopez Obrador has stoked those fears. On Saturday, he accused the respected Federal Electoral Institute, held up as an example to emerging democracies around the world, of being a "pawn of the party of the right."
Turning to his charges that Fox unfairly aided Calderon, he said the popular president "dedicated himself to attacking us and ended up being a complete traitor of democracy."
Fox has stayed out of the public eye for two weeks in an effort to avoid accusations that he was meddling in the debate.
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