FROM RECOUNTS TO RUN-OFFS

The latest turn in the Mexican election drama only confirms that it's too soon to tell who will lead the country into the next decade. But barring a demonstration of truly massive fraud, it's safe to say that Mexico will be led by a man who little more than a third of Mexican voters marked on their ballots on Sunday. The next President of Mexico will be the winner of what was ultimately a contest between Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Felope Calderon, a contest which a third of Mexico's voters gave up the chance to weigh in on when they chose to vote for one of the three other candidates instead. Some will no doubt respond that democratic elections are full of tough choices, and it's on each voter to weigh whether it's more important to pull the result towards one of the two foreseeable results (the first face of power, if you will), or to shift the sense of the politically feasible (the second face). But it's worth asking whether that sort of calculation, scintillating as it may be - the same sort of calculation many Connecticut Democrats will have to make if faced with a three-way ticket come November - is good for democracy in the broader sense of how much control individuals have over the decisions that determine the conditions of their lives (a greater problem, by that standard - David Held's - is the long shadow global capital casts over contests like this week's). Because it isn't necessary that that sort of calculation be necessary. Mexicans have far less cause than Americans to worry about throwing their votes away in congressional elections because Mexico has proportional representation. Both countries could take a further step towards reducing the centrality of cynical calculation from presidential voting by implementing instant run-off voting. Instant run-off voting forces politicians to pitch themselves as ideal elected officials if they hope to be viewed in victory as something other than everyone's second choice. And in elections like the one in Connecticut, and the one in Mexico, where critical, ideological choices are laid out more starkly than we ususally get to see them, it facilitates voters following Paul Wellstone's imperative to vote for what you believe in - and observers judging better from the results what kind of leadership those voters want.