[chrisdsaldivar]

This actually happened in the 1988 Mexican election. The PRI was losing the vote and their opposition was predicted to win using live vote tabulation. They hid the results by saying the system crashed and then declared themselves as winning. This kept many people from bothering to even vote.

However, they went much further and burned legitimate ballots and even made fake ones.

The difference here is the PRI actively used (fake) predictions to discourage voters.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Mexican_general_electio...

[sukilot]

According to your story, the prediction didn't affect the outcome.

[benrbray]

The most recent season of Narcos: Mexico has an entertaining dramatization of this event!

[corpMaverick]

Recently someone asked if the fraud of 88 had been as depicted in the series. This was my response. Which I think it is important since there are not many testimonies of what really happened.

"It definitely didn't happened the way it was portrayed in the series. I saw it first hand.

The election was managed from Gobernacion (Ministry of Interior) which was subservient to the PRI. We didn't have the same controls as we have today. The PRI had representatives in every little town in the whole country. My father was one of these and I accompanied him that day. The evening on the election day, they gather all the booths in the region at the mayors office. They had a team of people changing the paper votes. Removing some and adding some and changing the minutes accordingly. The PRI already had this election fixing infrastructure. In 1988, they had already been in power for 59 years. They knew how to fix the election. They had it down to a science. But in 1988 my father told me that this was the first time they had to do it because they may lose. All years before that, they did it just to get better participation numbers.

The PRI was a state Party. For many, many years it had complete control of every town, every state, every district. All the Governors, representatives, senators, mayors, judges in the country belonged to the PRI. May be some Narcos helped in some regions. But the PRI didn't really needed them. They had comprehensive control of the national territory. And they were able to manipulates the votes, specially in the rural areas.

The way it is portrayed in the series is really stupid. Gobernacion was in complete control of the computer systems, they didn't need a Narco to tell them how to break it.

TLDR; The fraud happened but it wasn't organized by the Narcos. At most they had a minor involvement."