US Center: No Fraud Evidence In Bolivia's October Polls

A U.S. research center said Thursday that 'no evidence of fraud' was found in Bolivia's presidential elections last October, which resulted in the ouster of former President Evo Morales.

"A new study, which analyzes the results of Bolivia's October election, concludes 'we cannot find results that would lead […] to the same conclusion as the OAS' that there was an 'inexplicable' and drastic change in the trend of the vote," Center of Economic and Political Research (CEPR) said in a statement.

CEPR announced the analysis by Jack Williams and John Curiel of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, determined "it is very likely that Morales won the required 10 percentage point margin to win in the first round of the election on October 20, 2019."

"The study, commissioned by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) to independently verify its November 2019 study, reaches many of the same conclusions as that earlier statistical analysis, and replicates some of the most significant statistical findings showing consistent voting trends in favor of Morales, before and after the interruption of the preliminary vote count [trep]," it said.

"Repeated Organization of American States (OAS) claims of an 'inexplicable' change in the vote count trend of the TREP were the basis for allegations of fraud shortly after the elections took place," it added. -