Unlike rain there can be a causal relation between predictions to election results. I.e. voters (and campaigners) can react to predictions.
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...
"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."
They registered me as Republican, and I received an unexpected voter id with my name misspelled on it in the mail.
I view this as similar to polls or predictions. They'd use the same data, e.g. "In Florida, 29% of voters are registered as Republicans," in an attempt to make other people feel 'safe' joining them.
With voting, some people want to feel a moral victory, that they voted for the winning team, and knowing that there are 29%, instead of 26 or 24 or however much they'd have without cheating (I'm making these numbers up for the example), would have some marginal psychological effect on people to believe that Florida is a partly Republican state, and you're not a complete nutball if you vote for a Republican in Florida.
As an aside, I was actually able to vote with that id, and I'm not sure if that should have given me more or less confidence in the system. More in the sense that, despite someone else messing with the system, I was still able to cast my vote. Less in the sense that, I voted with an incorrect name, and I wonder how easy it might be to conjure up nonexistent people or use dead people to vote.
Just wanted to give another example of how this is true, and the scummy lengths people will go to, to affect an election outcome.
But no evidence of voter fraud exists.
Therefore, this story is not true.
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-35350419
[2]: https://www.hkupop.hku.hk/english/report/freedom/FTP_2012.pd...
I suppose there are PR firms acting in the shadow to sell their candidates to the media, but nonetheless it seems there's a lot of randomness at play.