Bloodless Balloting

On Mexico's congressional election day last week, one enterprising politician hung official-looking posters outside his house, set up a booth inside, got two unsuspecting policemen to stand guard while neighbors lined up to vote. By the time his game was discovered that afternoon, the phony booth contained stacks of ballots that had to be discarded.

Apart from a few such incidents, the election went off calmly. Most of the 2,560,000 voters on the registration rolls went to the polls in the heaviest turnout ever (under a new law, eligible citizens who fail to vote can be fined). For the first time in any of Mexico's national elections, not a single death was reported.

The official count four days later gave the government's middle-of-the-road Party of Revolutionary Institutions a sweeping victory. It won all but one of the 147 seats at stake in the Chamber of Deputies. Not even the opposition parties expected much else. For most Mexicans, the election's greatest significance was the proof it offered that their country, after years of mixing blood with ballots, was finally reaching political maturity.

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