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Bomb Scare in Mexico City on Country’s Election Day

Mexico’s election season has been marred by political violence, including the assassinations of at least 23 local candidates this year.

Voters on their way to cast ballots in Mexico’s presidential election today were abruptly evacuated from one of the precincts in the nation’s capitol, when reports of a bomb threat spread through the office. “Just a short while ago, there was a bomb scare at a polling station just here in the capital, and so everyone was evacuated,” Lucia Newman, a Mexico City-based correspondent for Al Jazeera, said Sunday afternoon. Today, voters will choose between presidential favorite Claudia Sheinbaum and opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez to succeed outgoing Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. But the election season in Mexico has been marred by constant political violence, including the assassinations of nearly two dozen local candidates in the weeks leading up to the elections. “Depending on what part of the country we’re talking about, we know that both organized crime groups and others have been threatening voters, telling them if they don’t vote for the candidates that they have picked as their desired winner, that they will be killed,” Newman said.