1869 Mexican presidential election

The **1869 Mexican presidential election** was held on two separate occasions, after the first ballot was overturned, necessitating a re-run. The first vote was held on March 28, 1869, whilst the second vote was held on June 26, 1864. The election was held in order to elect the office of President of Mexico for the 1869-74 electoral term, marking the fourth presidential election in Mexican history, the final election in which José Mariano Salas was a candidate, the first disputed Mexican election, and the final election conducted under the constitution of 1854.

Following the Coup of 1852 and the proclamation of the Republic of Mexico the following year, José Mariano Salas seized power to become the first president of Mexico and the *de-facto* dictator of the new republic. In 1854, 1859, and 1864, Salas was elected to new terms in widely criticised elections. As a result of government economic and social policy between 1853 and 1861 known as *La Grand Reforma*, a small class of conservative economic elites came to control much of the Mexican economy, which itself had more than doubled in the period 1853-1863. The concentration of economic power into a small class of oligarchs was met with much public resentment and had seen the rise in popularity of the anti-government Restoration Party and Mexican Radical Party.

In February 1869, José Mariano Salas and vice president Félix María Zuloaga were re-nominated as the presidential ticked of the Conservative Party. Pedro de Iturbide and general Miguel Miramon were nominated as the Restoration Party ticket, making the election a repeat of the 1864 election. Elections were held in each of the thirty two federal states of the Republic of Mexico, with each state independently holding an election for the presidency, and the electoral ticket which won seventeen or more state elections would be elected as president and vice president. If no ticket was able to win seventeen states, then the two tickets with the highest share of states would progress to a second electoral round, where the ticket with the most states won would be elected to office.

After the initial results of the election on March 28, 1869 showed the Iturbide-Miramon ticket winning in a landslide, President José Mariano Salas ordered the election be run again on June 27, 1869. Subsequently, the re-run of the election saw the Salas-Zuloaga suddenly win in a landslide, with Iturbide and much of the opposition denouncing the elections as heavily rigged. José Mariano Salas and Félix María Zuloaga were formally inaugurated on September 1, 1869. Immediately following Salas' re-inauguration, Pedro Iturbide declared himself as the legitimate president of Mexico and called upon his supports to rise up against the government. After striking a deal with trade unions and revolutionary forces in southern Mexico, Iturbide's rebellion erupted on October 16, 1869 with the seizure of Merida exactly 17 years to the day of Salas' 1852 coup d'état. On November 18, 1869, José Mariano Salas resigned as president of Mexico and was succeeded by vice president Félix María Zuloaga. Zuloaga himself would resign as president in April 1870 and transferred power to general Juan Almonte, who struck a peace deal with Iturbide in order to hold new elections in 1873.