The Washington Post has a nice story in the paper about the Nicaraguan elections that happened yesterday. On the right side, there is also a photo array that shows the various aspects of the election. The two elections, days apart, provide an interesting point of comparison regarding how elections are run here and in other parts of the world. One point of interest is the issue of transparency. In many states, like Ohio, precinct activities are completely opaque except for the party challengers assigned to that precinct. Compare that to Nicaragua, as noted in the Post story.

Partial results from Sunday’s vote indicated that Ortega was leading the field of five candidates with 40 percent of the ballots — 7 points ahead of his strongest competitor, Eduardo Montealegre of the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance. The official result, which was based on 40 percent of ballots cast, was bolstered by similar findings from a quick count of a representative sample of ballots released Monday morning by Ethics and Transparency, a widely respected Nicaraguan civic groups that fielded 11,050 observers to every polling and counting center in the nation to do their own tally alongside the official one.