{"id":168232,"date":"2020-09-07T12:00:08","date_gmt":"2020-09-07T11:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=168232"},"modified":"2020-09-06T08:22:32","modified_gmt":"2020-09-06T07:22:32","slug":"the-oas-accusation-of-electoral-fraud-against-evo-morales-is-bullshit-and-now-we-have-the-data-to-prove-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/09\/the-oas-accusation-of-electoral-fraud-against-evo-morales-is-bullshit-and-now-we-have-the-data-to-prove-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The OAS Accusation of Electoral Fraud against Evo Morales Is Bullshit \u2014 and Now We Have the Data to Prove It"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The day after the Bolivian election, the Organization of American States suggested the result was fraudulent \u2014 then took months to provide any proof. Last month, it finally released its data \u2014 and researchers at the Center for Economic and Policy Research found a basic coding error that destroys the OAS\u2019s case against Morales.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Former Bolivian president Evo Morales at a news conference on January 19, 2020 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Ricardo Ceppi \/ Getty<\/p><\/div>\n

5 Sep 2020 – <\/em>August 20 was a day that shook a small world of scientists that had all but given up \u2014 short of legal threats \u2014 on getting a glimpse into the data and methods behind the analyses that took down the Bolivian government. Slowed by stonewalling and gaslighting, researchers had managed to re-create some \u2014 but not all \u2014 of the results presented by the Organization of American States (OAS) in its case against the legitimacy of Evo Morales\u2019s reelection last October 20.<\/p>\n

The OAS had alleged, the day after the vote, that the preliminary count contained an \u201cinexplicable change in trend<\/a>\u201d of the preliminary results \u2014 drastically skewing in Morales\u2019s favor. But its claim was dubious to begin with. As early as October 22, we began raising serious questions suggesting the \u201cinexplicable change\u201d was quite predictable.The OAS would later support its allegation by claiming that the official count also<\/em> contained a late break for Morales that \u201ccannot be easily explained away\u201d by Morales\u2019s generally rural support specifically because<\/em> the official count \u201cdata do not reflect the time the results were reported to the TSE [Tribunal Supremo Electoral<\/em>].\u201d This premise is entirely wrong; votes from the main cities were much more likely to be counted early, because the official count required hand delivery (rather than electronic transmission) of electoral materials to TSE offices.Faulty reasoning aside, the OAS results were irreproducible.<\/p>\n

Ten months later came the revelation that some of the OAS\u2019s previously baffling conclusions are explained by a coding error. It had ordered the time stamps on the tally sheets alphabetically<\/em> rather than chronologically<\/em> \u2014 thus destroying its narrative of a sudden change in the official count.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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Unjustly Forced Out<\/h1>\n

The damage, of course, had already been done. On November 11, 2019, Bolivia\u2019s president, Evo Morales \u2014 his term not yet complete \u2014 stepped down from the presidency amid allegations of fraud. Decisive was the report from the OAS, which had just presented its preliminary findings in a binding audit of the October 20 election. These findings were not favorable to Morales, questioning his official first-round victory.<\/p>\n

Members of the opposition, some of whom had been saying all along that Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS-IPSP) party would attempt fraud to stay in power, took to the streets in violent protest. Though Morales agreed to annul the election, the head of the military told him he should step down. He resigned and embarked on a dramatic flight from Bolivia to Mexico \u2014 barely making it out alive, according to the Mexican foreign minister.<\/a><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time<\/a> the OAS has deployed poor statistics to overturn election results. In 2010, the OAS intervened in Haiti, demanding that the third-place candidate be permitted to participate in a runoff election with the first-place candidate \u2014 leaving the runner-up, who just happened to be the only non-right-wing candidate, out in the cold.<\/p>\n

To be sure, security surrounding Bolivia\u2019s election was insufficient. At the risk of whataboutism, the same could be said of most any election in the United States. However, the OAS\u2019s findings presented in November were otherwise full of insinuation and short on detail. The OAS presented no actual evidence that even a single vote was altered. Instead, it offered a statistical analysis that statistician Andrew Gelman characterizes as \u201ca joke<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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Convenient Conclusions, Dodgy Assumptions<\/h1>\n

Even if the approach was dubious and the results were irreproducible, at least it presented something<\/em>. The OAS press release the day after the vote had presented no such analysis \u2014 though it certainly did raise the volume of opposition protests. Amid cries of \u201cfraud,\u201d prominent members of Morales\u2019s party and their families<\/a> were assaulted<\/a> or threatened with murder. Jeanine \u00c1\u00f1ez\u2019s \u201cinterim\u201d government \u2014 still in power today, having three times delayed new elections\u2014 would later cite the OAS reports as its near-exclusive evidence in its campaign to dismantle MAS.<\/p>\n

Despite repeated requests, the OAS offered no justification for their claims. This, even though the results seemed in line with pre-election polls. With the preliminary count 84 percent complete, Morales had received more than 45 percent of the valid votes in a nine-way race. Yet under Bolivian electoral law, this would not be enough to win the race outright: only if he had an absolute majority, or a 10-point lead over runner-up Carlos Mesa, would Morales avoid a second-round runoff.<\/p>\n