How many of these have you come across around Mexico in the last week? They are the billboards of a budding democracy -- basic, utilitarian, up-front. At each polling place on the night of elections in Mexico, tally results are marked and made public for all to review on paper sheets. They stay up for days.
This is a casilla sheet I ran into in a nice area of Coyoacan. As you can see, the right-leaning PAN won the polling place with 144 votes. Second came the resurgent PRI. Third came the left-leaning PRD, and right behind in fourth came ... voto nulo.
I've stumbled upon six casilla sheets in the past week, and heard anecdotally of several others; they've all told the same story. The top parties took the bulk of votes, but right behind, competitively, astoundingly, the grassroots protest vote made a remarkably strong showing. In Mexico City, it captured 11% of the vote, the highest of any federal entity. And that figure isn't just a sophisticated urbanite anomoly. Voto nulo is now the de facto third or fourth largest "political force" in some states, and became the fifth largest vote-getter overall. Keep in mind, it did so without hundreds of millions of pesos in public campaign financing enjoyed by even the most marginal parties.
That, objectively, says a lot.