Mexico presidential candidate takes election fraud claim to court News
Mexico presidential candidate takes election fraud claim to court

[JURIST] Mexican leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador [campaign website, in Spanish; Wikipedia profile] has asked Mexico's Federal Electoral Court [official website, in Spanish] to order a manual recount [JURIST report] of returns from the July 2 presidential election, which conservative Felipe Calderon [campaign website, in Spanish; Wikipedia profile] won by just 0.6 percent. Lopez Obrador turned over to the court nine boxes of evidence of alleged fraud and dirty campaign practices relating to the election, claiming that some polling stations counted more votes than registered voters, the ruling party helped finance Calderon's campaign, and that a software program skewed initial vote-count reports. The court must declare a winner by September 6.

On Sunday, Lopez Obrador told reporters that he lost the election due to voter fraud, and announced plans to contest the election [JURIST reports] in court. Mexican election laws [PDF text, in Spanish] permit a manual recount only if the ballot packages have been unsealed or if the initial tallies are faulty. Last week, the Federal Electoral Institute [official website, in Spanish] validated Calderon's victory. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resigns during Vietnam Conflict

On November 29, 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced that he was resigning from his office to accept an appointment as head of the World Bank. The announcement came as the Vietnam Conflict was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States and abroad.