2012's Most Compelling International Elections

Nov. 14, 2012 -- intro: As voters in the United States have just cooled down from the 2012 election season, contests across the globe are just heating up.

From Ukrain's disputed election, to Egypt, which held its first democratic election in centuries, a stream of countries are set for or have held highly contentious and internationally influential elections this year.

Here is a look at the most-hotly watched international elections taking place in 2012.

quicklist:1title:category:text: In late October, Western observers deemed the Ukranian parliamentary election unfair, claiming that its results were marred by a delayed vote count and other irregularities.

Clouded vote tallying and the imprisonment of Yulia Tymoshenko, President Viktor Yanukovich's opponent, led to the turmoil caused by the Oct. 28 election. Tymonshenko is serving a seven-year term following her conviction for abuse of office in October 2011 but her supporters claim that her imprisonment was politically motivated.

The current President Yanukovich is now facing impeachment threats from Ukraine's three major opposition parties after the results of the disputed election were announced.

The three pro-Western opposition parties, the Svoboda (Freedom), Ukrainian nationalist party and Klitschko's UDAR (Punch) showed a strong turnout of proportional voting that chooses half of parliament's 450 seats; however, they accuse authorities of altering the results in certain individual races in an attempt to secure the majority seats for Yanukovych's allies.

The Central Elections Common posted the final election results for 445 of the parliament's 450 seats, with President Viktor Yanukovych's party and allied parties controlling most of the seats. After the results were posted, hundreds of protesters rallied outside the Central Election Commission building in Kiev to protest and to demand an honest vote recount.

Opposition forces have threatened to boycott the newly elected parliament and they vow to hold a slew of protests in hopes of initiating an entirely new election.

Authorities attempted to appease the opposing Fatherland Party by proposing a revote in five disputed election districts. That offer was declined by the opposition, who says that their candidates lawfully won those races and that there was no need for a revote there.

Rather, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who now heads the Fatherland party since the imprisonment of the former premier Tymoshenko, said that there parties are not demanding a revote but a recount in 13 districts which they believe that they were victorious.

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quicklist: 1title: Mexicocategory: Enrique Pena Nieto vs. Josefina Vazquez Motaurl: 15911261text: Official preliminary vote counts put Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Enrique Pedro Nieto on top of the Mexican presidential race. Nieto garnered 38 percent of the vote, according to preliminary counts, while second-place leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador raked in 31 percent. Lopez Obrador has refused to accept defeat until the final vote tallies are in.

The war against drug cartels has defined U.S.-Mexico relations for almost a decade. With Mexican President Felipe Calderon ineligible to run for another term, his party, the National Action Party, nominated Mexico's education minister, Josefina Vazquez Mota. If Mota, who was third with 25 percent of the vote as of Sunday, had won, she would be Mexico's first female president.