[rad-green] The OAS Lied to the Public About the Bolivian Election and Coup

*https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/11/19/oas-lied-public-about-bolivian-election-and-coup
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/11/19/oas-lied-public-about-bolivian-election-and-coup>Market
Watch       November 19, 2019*





*The OAS Lied to the Public About the Bolivian Election and CoupFacts show
nothing suspicious about the re-election of Evo Morales.by Mark Weisbrot*

[image: Supporters of Evo Morales demonstrate in Cochabamba, Bolivia, on
Monday. (Photo: RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)]

*Supporters of Evo Morales demonstrate in Cochabamba, Bolivia, on Monday.
(Photo: RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)*

What is the difference between an outright lie—stating something as a fact
while knowing that it is false—and a deliberate material representation
that accomplishes the same end? Here is an example that really pushes the
boundary between the two, to the point where the distinction practically
vanishes.

And the consequences are quite serious; this misrepresentation (or lie) has
already played a major role in a military coup in Bolivia last week
<https://www.marketwatch.com/story/chaos-sweeps-bolivia-as-ousted-president-morales-accepts-asylum-in-mexico-2019-11-11>.
This military coup overthrew the government of President Evo Morales before
his current term was finished—a term to which nobody disputes that he was
democratically elected in 2014.

More violent repression and even a civil war could follow.

The Organization of American States (OAS) sent an Electoral Observation
Mission to Bolivia, entrusted with monitoring the Oct. 20 national election
there. The day after the election, before all the votes were even counted,
the mission put out a press release announcing
<http://cepr.net/press-center/press-releases/oas-should-retract-its-press-release-on-bolivian-election-cepr-co-director-says>its
“deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the
trend of the preliminary results…”

Here is what the OAS was referring to: there is an unofficial “quick count”
of the voting results that involves contractors who upload results at
intervals, as the tally sheets are available. At 7:40 p.m. on election day,
they had reported about 84% of the votes and then stopped reporting for 23
hours (more on that below).

When they resumed reporting results at 95% of votes counted, Morales’s lead
had increased from 7.9% before the interruption to just over 10%.

This margin was important because in order to win without a second-round
runoff, a candidate needs either an absolute majority, or at least 40% and
a 10-point margin over the second-place finisher. This margin — which grew
to 10.6% when all the votes were counted in the official count — re-elected
Morales without a second round.

Morales’s lead grew steadily

Now, if you had any experience with elections or maybe even arithmetic,
what is the first thing you would want to know about the votes that came in
after the interruption? You might ask, were people in those areas any
different from people in the average precinct in the first 84%?

And was the change in Morales’s margin sudden, or was it a gradual trend
that continued as more vote tally sheets were reported?

You might even want to ask these questions before expressing “deep concern
and surprise” about what happened, especially in a politically very
polarized situation that was already turning violent.
[image: MW-HV579_mas_ip_20191119112801_NS.jpg?uu]*This graph shows that the
lead held by President Evo Morales (light blue dots) and by his party in
parliamentary elections (dark blue dots) rose at a steady rate for most of
the vote counting. There was no sudden surge at the end to put him over the
10% threshold. CEPR*

A look at that data shows that the change in Morales’s lead was actually
gradual and continuous, and started rising many hours before the break in
reporting of the quick count. You can see that in a graph of the results
<http://cepr.net/images/bolivia-elections-2019-11-fig1.png>.

It’s geography

Why did it happen? The answer is simple and not that uncommon: the people
in later-reporting areas were more pro-MAS (Morales’s party, the Movement
Toward Socialism) than those in areas that reported earlier. Hence the
gradual and continuous rise in Morales’s lead, in which the votes after the
interruption put him over the top.

The OAS has published two press releases, one preliminary report, and one
preliminary audit on the election. How many of these contained the
disparagement of the election results implied by the “deep concern and
surprise” quoted above? Three. How many contained anything about the
difference between the percentage of MAS/Morales voters in areas with later
returns versus earlier? Zero.

As it turns out, the interruption in the quick count was not a sign of foul
play either.

Quick count has no legal status

The quick count is separate from the official count, and has no legal
status to determine the results. It’s never been intended or promised to be
a complete count; in prior elections it did not even near 84%.

It’s just a quick series of snapshots, done by contractors, to provide
early results before the official count is done. It makes sense that the
electoral authorities might not want two sets of voting results, which are
inherently different, coming out at the same time in a violently polarized
political situation.

For those who like numbers better than graphs: Morales’s margin after the
first 84% of votes was 7.9%, as noted. If we look at the remaining 16% of
precincts, and we ask, what is Morales’s pre-interruption margin in the
areas where these later-reporting precincts were located? That margin is
about 22%. Again, a simple explanation
<http://cepr.net/images/Bolivia-elections-2019-11-18.png>of how his margin
increased as it did with later returns.

For a more powerful statistical analysis
<http://cepr.net/publications/reports/bolivia-elections-2019-11>, we can
project the remaining (and thus total) vote count on the basis of the first
84% reported. And—no surprise here—Morales’s projected final margin based
on the first 84% of votes turns out to be slightly more than 10%.

It is difficult, almost impossible, to believe that this OAS mission, or
those above them in the OAS Department of Electoral Cooperation and
Observation, felt “deep concern and surprise” and yet were too incompetent
to even look at this data.

Three lies

That is why I would say that they lied at least three times: in the first
press release
<https://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-085/19>,
the preliminary report,
<https://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=S-019/19>and
the preliminary audit
<https://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-099/19>.
And that is why I would regard with great skepticism the allegations
presented in their preliminary audit, and further publications—unless these
can be verified by independent investigators from publicly available data.

And the OAS isn’t all that independent at the moment, with the Trump
administration actively promoting this military coup, and Washington having
more right-wing allies in the OAS than they did just a few years ago.

Not to mention that the U.S. supplies 60% of its budget. But the OAS has
horribly abused its mandate
<http://cepr.net/documents/publications/haiti-oas-2011-10.pdf> in election
monitoring before, helping to reverse election results as the U.S. and its
allies wanted: most destructively, in 2000 in Haiti; and also in the same
country in 2011.

More evidence: in the last three weeks, the OAS has refused to answer
questions from journalists, on the record, about their statements or
reports since the election.

Maybe they are afraid that a curious reporter would ask questions like
these: Is there a difference between the political preferences of people
who live in later-reporting areas as compared to earlier ones? Doesn’t this
explain how Morales’s lead rose to more than 10% as votes from more
pro-Morales areas came in? Did you even look at this question?

Since I am an economist, I believe in incentives: I am offering a $500
reward for the first journalist who can get a substantive answer to these
questions from an OAS official, on the record. Even if turns out to be a
lie.

Mark Weisbrot <http://www.commondreams.org/author/mark-weisbrot> is
Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
<http://www.cepr.net/> (CEPR), in Washington, DC. He is also president of Just
Foreign Policy <http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/>. He is co-author, with
Dean Baker, of *Social Security: The Phony Crisis
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226035468?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0226035468&adid=0RK4TFFYV9E33FTMWEEK&>*.
E-mail Mark: [email protected]

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