Final Tally

The final cost of the just-completed elections was almost 13 billion pesos, or about $1 billion. I fully expect this to result in at least some hand-wringing and lamentations about the excessive cost, but really, diverting around 0.15 percent of your annual GDP to elections every three years doesn't seem excessive to me. For comparison's sake, the 2008 US election, which was of course presidential and sparked unprecedented interest, cost $5.3 billion, a comparatively much smaller slice of the US economy. So maybe there is reason for concern in Mexico.