Bolivian Voters Give President Evo Morales a Landslide Third-Term Win

Presidente de Bolivia Evo Morales. Imagen de Flickr del usuario  Alain Bachellier (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Bolivian President Evo Morales. Flickr photo courtesy of user Alain Bachellier (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

According to exit polls and quick count surveys, the Bolivian media report that President Evo Morales of the Movement Toward Socialism Party (MAS) has won re-election with approximately 60 percent of the votes and will remain president until the year 2020.

There were 6.2 million Bolivian citizens eligible to vote in the 2014 general elections. The most notable change for this particular election has been that, for the first time, 273,000 citizens have been allowed to vote from 31 outside countries. Bolivia, where voting is obligatory, has one of the highest voter turnout records in South America.

The same initial counts anticipate that Morales's MAS-IPSP (Movement Toward Socialism – Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the People Party) will have control of two-thirds of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly.

This data is unofficial and will be confirmed within the next 48 hours.

The two most commonly used hashtags for reporting and commentary during the elections have been #EleccionesBo (Election Bolivia) and #BoliviaElige (Bolivia chooses). A few days ago, blogger and digital activist Tonny López (@tonnylp) drew attention to the proliferation of hashtags in the traditional and digital media, where nearly 20 different tags have been put into place:

Think about this: media, citizens, and activists in Bolivia all use their own hashtags for these elections.

The most notorious incident to date was a printer's error on the ballot sheet that read “'Plurinominal’ State of Bolivia”, rather than “‘Plurinational’ State of Bolivia.”

“The PLURINOMINAL State of Bolivia.” Blame it on AutoCorrect? XD

The responsibility for this gaffe rested with the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, who responded via Twitter:

#RamiroParedes: The term “Plurinominal” does not affect the legally binding force of the elections. Our safeguard measures will be reevaluated. 

#TSE: The origin of the printing error on the ballot sheet has not yet been determined; The matter will be investigated starting tomorrow.

Just two days before the election, Bolivians looked back on the 32 years since democracy was restored in Bolivia. Since that time, eight general elections have been held in the country.

3 comments

  • Vixpix1

    Why has America, the world’s first modern democracy, turned into a corporatist state where the wealth of the nation flows to the 1%, while Bolivia uses it’s national wealth to help the people?

    Viva Morales!

  • Hornet

    May Allah bless him with long life and strong will power to serve his people. May the American’s sinister designs fail in Bolovia. Will CIA and wealthy Americans tolerate such a revolutionary leader.

  • […] più usati su Twitter – #EleccionesBo e #BoliviaElige – man mano ne sono sbucati fuori una ventina diversi tra loro (vedi sotto), creando non poca confusione online, come segnala l’attivista-giornalista Tonny […]

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