Francisco Cantú was born in Puebla, Mexico, in 1982. Throughout his life, he displayed a deep love of learning and discovery. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science with highest honors from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). He earned one of the highest GPAs in the institution’s history and to this day is remembered as one of its brightest alumni. He then pursued and received a PhD in political science from the University of California San Diego (UCSD). As a doctoral student, he made significant contributions to the study of electoral integrity, particularly in his dissertation, parts of which were subsequently published in top academic journals. Francisco sought to explain the conditions under which electoral irregularities take place. Exploiting the random assignment of voters to different polling stations in Mexico (based on their last names’ alphabetical order), he identified those places where unusual turnout rates were recorded. He then focused on these polling stations and examined which party stood to gain from those anomalous patterns. His results demonstrated that, despite the efforts to remove electoral fraud after the fall of the PRI in 2000, the liberalization of the political system in Mexico did not fully eliminate the fraudulent behavior of political machines. His scholarly work, in addition to its academic rigor and novelty, was very committed with real-world problems and became a critical resource for journalists, activists, and politicians in Mexico. At UCSD, he was more than just an exceptional graduate student; he was a beloved colleague, a true friend, and an inspiration to all.
After completing his PhD, Francisco became a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the University of Houston (UH). Over the course of a decade, his tenure at the institution was exemplary. Francisco provided inspiration and mentorship to the diverse student body at UH, a significant portion of whom are first-generation college attendees. His courses were very popular, leaving an enduring impression on the fortunate students who had the privilege of being taught by him. Francisco also devoted numerous hours to his students, providing them with valuable guidance for their academic and professional aspirations, and he was always ready to lend them a compassionate ear. From the outset, Francisco proved to be an invaluable asset to the department and a generous colleague. In recognition of his exceptional research contributions, outstanding caliber of his work, and his excellence in teaching, he earned tenure in 2019 and was awarded the Senator Don Henderson Chair in 2021. In addition to his contributions to the department of political science Francisco had a prominent role in the University of Houston: he co-directed the Hobby School’s Survey Research Institute, served as instructor for the Empirical Implications of Theoretical Problems (EITM) Summer Institute, co-hosted of the University of Houston’s Political Economy Speaker Series, convened major academic conferences, and contributed to joint research activities of the Center for Public Policy and UH Energy. His intellectual prowess, cooperative spirit, and benevolence made him a cherished and respected figure among his peers at the University of Houston.
During his academic career, much of his intellectual attention was devoted to research on electoral integrity, legislative politics, and Latin American politics. He addressed these different topics using a wide range of methods, including formal models, statistical methods for large and complex data, machine learning, image analytics, Bayesian inference, spatial modeling, item-response models, and time-series analysis. In his research Francisco combined some of the best qualities of field work with his impressive analytical and statistical skills. For example, in his article “The Fingerprints of Fraud: Mexico’s 1988 presidential election,” published in the American Political Science Review, he investigated the notorious “crash of the system” incident, when the Mexican government interrupted the public vote count after the first vote tallies showed adverse results for the incumbent party’s candidate. Francisco retrieved the original forms with precinct level vote tallies from the 1988 Mexican presidential election stored at the country’s National Archive; managing this massive amount of information required “Indiana Jones-like” skills. At the archives he photographed the vote tally forms from more than 53,000 polling stations and applied cutting-edge machine learning and convolutional neural networks (CNN) techniques to identify the returns that were disrupted during the official count at the district councils. He systematically showed that electoral manipulation did not occur in a centralized way, but rather at the polling stations and district councils. His work was also very influential in overcoming a common informational problem of the Mexican Congress: the partial, non-random publication of voting records. His Bayesian approach created solutions not only to compute unbiased estimations, but to make trustworthy analyses about legislative behavior in his home country.
Francisco was recognized not just for his academic accomplishments but also for his genuine warmth and compassion that charmed everyone he encountered. He had a soft-spoken manner, demonstrated a genuine interest in others, and had an ability to make everyone feel valued. These qualities endeared him to all—colleagues, friends, and family alike. As we bid farewell to Francisco, we remember not only his academic contributions but the essence of the man himself. A devoted husband to Lucero and a loving father to Sol, his family was his foundation, and his legacy will forever echo through their lives. Francisco embodied wisdom, decency and humility, leaving an enduring testament to the profound impact one person can have on the world. His absence will be deeply felt. ■
On the evening of July 6, 1988, when Francisco Cantú was five years old, a poll worker in his hometown of Puebla wrote sesenta y cinco on a tally sheet in small, blue print, recording 65 votes for the presidential candidate of the PRI. Later that night, a person with a black pen made changes. The person with the black pen wrote novecientos in dark round cursive, right over the original tally in blue.
To look at this tally sheet, to look at others like it, is to see quite plainly—in a way that obviates the likes of Benford’s law—both the presence and the magnitude of the electoral fraud that changed the course of Mexican history. Yet no one did look, and so no one did see, for more than two decades, as myths and mysteries about that infamous election spiraled through the public sphere.
In that time Francisco grew up, and he became a political scientist. Francisco looked in the archive, and he saw the crossings-out and the writings-over, and then he trained a neural network to look and see: to tell us which of the 53,000 tally sheets had been altered, and by how many votes. The results remain, to my mind, among the greatest reveals in all of social science. Myths were undone. Mysteries solved.
One might think that such a scholar would have little time for others. But when, in the early days of the pandemic, I wrote to ask for help, he responded to me—a junior person and a stranger—with curiosity, generosity, insight, even enthusiasm. And I am grateful. ■
I am convinced that destiny wanted me to learn from Francisco in multiple dimensions. We interacted before I was and while being a graduate student, as a new and as an “advanced” assistant professor, before and after being a mother, as colleagues and friends. I can write about a very powerful and memorable lesson that he taught me in all those stages. For example, after his flawless presentation as an invited speaker at Washington University in St. Louis which left the audience speechless, I, a first-year grad student, thought “I wish to write a paper like that; I want to be this type of researcher.” He truly was one of the greatest academics I have ever met and still, the most impactful lessons I cherish come from witnessing him in his roles as father and husband.
There was this time when my husband and I gave Francisco’s daughter, Sol, a big chocolate chip cookie and she had a massive sugar rush for which Lucero still needs to have revenge. Sol could not stop running and laughing while trying to play soccer, Francisco’s passion, with her dad. Seeing them chase each other and laugh to tears on the grass is one of the purest moments of joy and love I have ever witnessed. I did not have kids back then, but I thought “I wish I could have this moment one day; I want to be this type of parent.” A respectful, kind, empowering, honest, and loving parent who creates magic with their kid even in the simplest moments. Who teaches her about kombucha and dances “Soy yo” with her; and who guides her way with love and kindness as their main principles.
It is extremely hard to find people who are so exceptionally brilliant, kind, hardworking, generous, and humble as Francisco was. But I hope that the example he set will inspire and guide our own actions as teachers, researchers, and human beings. That will be the best way of continuing his legacy and honoring his memory. ■
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