1.   A new, independent elections council has made it difficult for the party to win by the fraud that its members had raised to a science.

2.   A new, independent elections council has taken extraordinary measures to insure that the balloting will not be tainted by vote-tampering and ballot-box-stuffing.

3.   Earlier this month the Chamber of Deputies chose a new elections council that was received with widespread praise.

4.   Elections will no longer be supervised by a political ally of the sitting president but will be run by an independent elections council.

5.   The elections council has not decided whether to call a new election in the state.

6.   The governor, Victor Cervera Pacheco, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, defied previous federal orders to reform the election council, which was stacked with party loyalists.

7.   The outcome was a vindication for the head of the elections council, Jose Woldenberg, who had pledged to run an election that would give Mexicans new confidence.

8.   The state elections council gave no explanation for the time it announced its decision.

9.   A member of the Lavalas Political Organization, Smarth suggested the elections council had a pro-Aristide bias.

10.   Alexandre Lavaud, secretary-general of the elections council, says all challenges to the voting will be investigated.