This chapter analyzes persistent exclusionary electoral practices, using quantitative indicators of access to the secret ballot in Mexico's 1994 presidential election in rural areas. While the opposition expected a re-run of the repertoire of fraud and manipulation that characterized the 1988 race, instead the state effectively deployed a range of levers of intervention in rural economic and social life that, in combination with the systematic lack of access to the secret ballot, reduced the ruling party's need to resort to fraud by inducing a widespread ‘fear vote’. This study draws on two previously unstudied data sets to estimate the degree of rural voter access to the secret ballot in the 1994 presidential elections, including a focus on opposition party oversight in indigenous municipalities in the states of Oaxaca, Veracruz, and Chiapas.
Keywords: secret ballot, fear vote, fraud, election observation, Civic Alliance, indigenous, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Chiapas