What Happen

ed in Bolivia’s 2019 Vote Count? The Role of the OAS Electoral Observation Mission

3

Introduction

On October 20, 2019, Bolivia held presidential and parliamentary elections. Nine presidential candidates competed in the presidential election. However, well before the electoral campaign began, polling indicated that the election was likely to be a two-way race between incumbent president Evo Morales of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS-IPSP), and former president Carlos Mesa of Comunidad Ciudadana (CC).

There are potentially two rounds in Bolivia’s presidential elections.

A candidate receiving either mor e than 50 percent of the vote, or at lea st 40 percent with a 10 percentage point lead over the runner-up in the first round, is declared the winner. If no candidate meets either of these requirements, the two candidates with the most votes must face each other in a runoff election.

On October 25, Bolivia’s electoral authorit

y, the Tribunal Supremo Electoral, or TSE, published the final official election results.

Morales had obtained 2,889,359 votes, or 47.08 percent, to Mesa’s

2,240,920 votes, or 36.51 percent. Mora

les’s 648,439

-vote lead gave him a 10.5 percentage point margin and therefore a first-round victory without the need for a runoff. The MAS-IPSP also won a majority in the legislative elections. Though the MAS-IPSP lost seats in both houses, the party held on to a majority of 68 seats out of 130 in the lower house, and 21 out of 36 seats in the senate. An Electoral Observation Mission from the Organization of American States (OAS) was sent to observe the elections.

1

According to the OAS, t

he mission was “c

omposed of 92 observers, who [were to be] deployed in the 9 departments of the country to observe the process in all of its stages and

throughout the country.”

2

Bol ivi a H as T w o Vote- Counti ng Syst ems, but Onl y One Is Legally Binding

The TSE ha s two vote-counting systems.

3

The first is a quick count known as the Transmisión de Resultados Electorales Preliminares (TREP, hereafter referred to as the quick count). This is a system that Bolivia and several other Latin American countries have implemented following OAS