June, 07 2020, 12:00am EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Tillie McInnis,Domestic Communications Coordinator,202-293-5380 x117,E-mail,Dan Beeton,International Communications Coordinator,202-239-1460,E-mail
WASHINGTON
Nearly eight months after incumbent Bolivian president Evo Morales was ousted in a coup d'etat amid allegations of electoral fraud, The New York Times reports that the Organization of American States' (OAS) claims of fraud in the November 2019 general elections "relied on incorrect data and inappropriate statistical techniques."
The Times article focuses on a new report from Nicolas Idrobo, Dorothy Kronick, and Francisco Rodriguez. The report, which uses detailed electoral data previously unavailable to researchers outside of the OAS, refutes OAS claims that fraud altered the election results. For months, the OAS has resisted calls for it to release its data and methodology. The authors show that they were able to predict the final outcome of the election within three one-hundredths of a percentage point, using data from prior elections and votes counted before an election night interruption of the vote.
"For those paying close attention to the 2019 election, there was never any doubt that the OAS' claims of fraud were bogus," said Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Research Associate Jake Johnston, coauthor of an 82-page report on the Bolivian election and the OAS audit of that election. "Just days after the election, a high-level official inside the OAS privately acknowledged to me that there had been no 'inexplicable' change in the trend, yet the organization continued to repeat its false assertions for many months with little to no pushback or accountability."
CEPR analysts, using publicly accessible electoral data, came to similar conclusions regarding the false nature of the OAS's claims in reports published in November 2019 and March 2020. On October 21, 2019, just one day after Bolivia's election, the OAS denounced -- without providing any evidence -- a "drastic" and "inexplicable" change in the trend of the vote count following an interruption of the transmission of the election results. At the time, CEPR was quick to note that the data simply did not back up the OAS claims. Nevertheless, on November 10 -- the day the OAS released an audit of the election reiterating its claims of an inexplicable change in the trend -- the Bolivian military called on Morales to resign, and the president sought asylum in Mexico. An unelected government remains in power today with the strong support of the country's military. The military's repression of anti-coup protests resulted in dozens of deaths and scores of arrests.
Comparing the last votes to be counted with the first 95 percent, the OAS had alleged a dramatic break in trend, favoring Morales. The new paper finds that this allegation resulted from a "coding error" on the part of Irfan Nooruddin, a Georgetown University professor whom the OAS contracted to conduct the statistical analysis. The paper's authors found they could only replicate the OAS' findings if they excluded a certain subset of voter tally sheets; if those sheets are included, the authors found zero evidence of any "discontinuity" in the election returns. "In this case, there is neither a jump nor an uptick in the trend of MAS's vote share in the final 5% of the count," the authors conclude.
"The OAS bears responsibility for the significant deterioration of the human rights situation in Bolivia since Morales's ouster," CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said. He noted that this was not the first time the OAS had played a damaging role in an electoral crisis, citing the 2010 elections in Haiti as an example. "If the OAS and Secretary General Luis Almagro are allowed to get away with such politically driven falsification of their electoral observation results again, this threatens not only Bolivian democracy but the democracy of any country where the OAS may be involved in elections in the future."
"While quantitative evidence was merely one of the findings of the OAS audit report," the paper's authors write, "it played--and continues to play--an outsize role in Bolivia's political crisis. It helped convict Morales of fraud in the court of public opinion. We find that this key piece of evidence is faulty and should be excluded."
The Times article, however, gives the OAS the benefit of the doubt, allowing the organization -- and the head of its electoral cooperation and observation department, Gerardo de Icaza -- to uncritically point to its other allegations of wrongdoing in the election. De Icaza is quoted as saying, "Statistics don't prove or disprove fraud. Hard evidence like falsified statements of polls and hidden I.T. structures do. And that is what we found."
CEPR's 82-page analysis of the OAS Final Report on the audit of the elections notes that the auditing company investigated the "unauthorized" server which was the subject of an alert and determined no data had been altered or manipulated. The OAS' audit never mentioned the alert or the subsequent investigation. "Falsified" tally sheets, CEPR's report points out, may in some cases be examples of people assisting with tally sheets in rural or other areas with relatively higher rates of illiteracy or areas where significant numbers of people may not speak Spanish, the only language used for the tally sheets.
"The OAS has already been caught in an obvious lie and failed to correct the record, even after their claims were repeatedly refuted," Weisbrot said. "Given this, there is simply no reason to accept the remaining OAS claims at face value."
CEPR's 82-page report published in March analyzes additional claims made in the OAS' audit of the elections. The report found that the OAS' audit did not provide any evidence that alleged irregularities altered the outcome of the election, or were part of an actual attempt to do so. Far from providing a neutral and independent assessment that could have provided greater clarity in the midst of a highly polarized environment, the audit represented an apparent attempt by the OAS to justify its previous actions -- including its repeated false claims about an "inexplicable" trend change of the vote. CEPR's previous statistical findings were replicated and confirmed by two researchers at the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.
Idrobo, Kronick, and Rodriguez compare voting trends in the US with Bolivia, noting that in the US, "Young and nonwhite voters, who tend to vote Democrat, are more likely to cast mail-in and provisional ballots, which are more likely to be counted late. In Bolivia, too, compositional changes likely explain the shift in late-counted votes." They note "the incumbent's [Morales's] vote share increased with time all evening..."
New presidential elections have been scheduled for September 6, 2020. The OAS has once again been invited to observe the vote.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) was established in 1999 to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. In order for citizens to effectively exercise their voices in a democracy, they should be informed about the problems and choices that they face. CEPR is committed to presenting issues in an accurate and understandable manner, so that the public is better prepared to choose among the various policy options.
(202) 293-5380LATEST NEWS
'Evil and Cruel': GOP Lawmaker Shamed for Unloading Medicaid-Related Stock Before Voting to Gut Program
"Their bill will gut Medicaid and kill people, and they know it," said Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.).
Jul 03, 2025
Republican Congressman Robert Bresnahan of Pennsylvania got publicly shamed by many of his congressional colleagues on Thursday after it was revealed he unloaded a Medicaid-related stock before voting for a massive budget package that enacted historically devastating cuts to the program.
Quiver Quantitative, an investment data platform that tracks stock trades made by politicians and other prominent public figures, revealed on its X account that Bresnahan recently sold shares he'd owned in Centene Corporation, a for-profit firm that specializes in delivering healthcare exchanges for Medicaid. In the weeks since he sold his shares in the company, their value plunged by more than 40 percent.
Quiver Quantitative added that while Bresnahan claims not to manage his own stock portfolio, he does not appear to have set up a qualified blind trust that would eliminate potential conflicts of interest between his investments and his work as a member of Congress.
Regardless, many of Bresnahan's Democratic colleagues reacted with fury and disgust to revelations that the Centene shares were dropped before he voted for a bill that will slash more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) over the span of a decade.
"This Congressman literally dumped stock in a Medicaid provider company right before this bill came to the floor," wrote Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) on X. "Don't be fooled—these guys know exactly what they're doing."
"Wow," marveled Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.). "So he votes to gut Medicaid and throw 17 million people off of their healthcare and then dumps his Medicaid related stock to cover his own ass? That's just evil and cruel."
"If the Big Ugly Nasty Bill doesn't hurt Medicaid, why are Republicans selling their Medicaid-associated stocks?" asked Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.). "Their words say one thing, their actions another. Their bill will gut Medicaid and kill people, and they know it."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) ripped Bresnahan for "protecting his stock portfolio while ripping away health care from 17 million Americans" with his vote to gut Medicaid.
"This is Washington at its worst," she added. "We need to ban Congressional stock trading."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Climate Change Fueling 'Most Widespread and Damaging' Droughts in History: UN Report
"This is not a dry spell," said the co-author of a new U.N. report. "This is a slow-moving global catastrophe."
Jul 03, 2025
Climate change is driving "some of the most widespread and damaging drought events in recorded history," according to a report published Wednesday on global drought hotspots.
Over the past two years, droughts have fueled increased food insecurity, dehydration, and disease that have heightened poverty and political instability in several regions of the world, according to research by the U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
"This is not a dry spell," says Dr. Mark Svoboda, report co-author and NDMC Director. "This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I've ever seen. This report underscores the need for systematic monitoring of how drought affects lives, livelihoods, and the health of the ecosystems that we all depend on."
The report examined conditions in some of the globe's most drought-prone regions. They found that the economic disruption caused by droughts today is twice as high as in 2000.
In Eastern and Southern Africa, which have been blighted with dangerously low levels of rainfall, more than 90 million people face acute hunger.
Somalia has been hit particularly hard, with 4.4 million, more than a quarter of the population, facing "crisis level" food insecurity in early 2025. Zambia, meanwhile, faced one of the world's worst energy crises last year when the Zambezi River dried up, causing its hydroelectric dams to run critically low.
Other drought-plagued regions have seen wide ranges of ecological and economic disruptions.
In Spain, low levels of rainfall in 2023 devastated olive crops, causing olive oil prices to double. In the Amazon Basin, low water levels caused a mass death of fish and endangered dolphins. The Panama Canal became so depleted that trade vessels were forced to re-route, causing multi-week shipping delays. And in Morocco, Eid celebrations had to be cancelled due to a shortage of sheep.
Recent studies of drought have found that they are increasingly caused not by lack of rainfall, but by aggressive heat, which speeds up evaporation. The areas hit the hardest over the past two years were ones already suffering from the most severe temperature increases. It was also exacerbated by a particularly severe El Niño weather cycle in 2023-24.
"This was a perfect storm," says report co-author Dr. Kelly Helm Smith, NDMC Assistant Director and drought impacts researcher. "El Niño added fuel to the fire of climate change, compounding the effects for many vulnerable societies and ecosystems past their limits."
Though the effects of droughts are often felt most acutely in areas already suffering from poverty and instability, the researchers predict that as they get worse, the effects will be felt worldwide.
In 2024, then the hottest year on record, 48 of the 50 U.S. states faced drought conditions, the highest proportion ever seen. Drought in the U.S. has coincided with a dramatic increase in wildfire frequency and severity over the past 50 years.
"Ripple effects can turn regional droughts into global economic shocks," Smith said. "No country is immune when critical water-dependent systems start to collapse."
The researchers advocated for investments in global drought prevention, but also for broader measures to address the existing inequalities that make droughts more severe.
"Drought has a disproportionate effect on those with few resources," Smith said. "We can act now to reduce the effects of future droughts by working to ensure that everyone has access to food, water, education, health care and economic opportunity."
The researchers also emphasized the urgency of coordinated action to confront the climate crisis.
"The struggles...to secure water, food, and energy under persistent drought offer a preview of water futures under unchecked global warming," said Svoboda. "No country, regardless of wealth or capacity, can afford to be complacent."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump-GOP Budget Bill Will Give Top 1% Over $1 Trillion in Tax Breaks: Analysis
The amount set to flow to a "tiny sliver of affluent families" over the next decade is roughly equal to the Medicaid cuts included in the Republican bill, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Jul 03, 2025
An analysis released Thursday estimates that the Republican legislation on the brink of final passage in Congress would deliver over $1 trillion in combined tax breaks to the richest 1% of Americans over the next decade—an amount roughly equal to the bill's unprecedented cuts to Medicaid.
The new analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), which utilizes data from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation and other sources, finds that the "tiny sliver of affluent families" in the top 1% of the U.S. income distribution will "receive tax cuts totaling $1.02 trillion over the next decade."
The centerpiece of Trump's megabill is a trillion-dollar tax cut to the wealthy, paid for by increasing the national debt and cutting public services. pic.twitter.com/ISr2XuIdJQ
— ITEP (@iteptweets) July 3, 2025
ITEP has previously shown that the Republican bill's tax cuts—largely extensions of expiring provisions of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law—would be highly skewed to the wealthy, with the small percentage of households at the very top receiving significantly more in total tax breaks than middle- and lower-income Americans.
"Sixty-nine percent of the net tax cuts would go to the richest fifth of Americans in 2026, only 11% would go to the middle fifth of Americans, and less than 1% would go to the poorest fifth," the group found. "The $107 billion in net tax cuts going to the richest 1% next year would exceed the amount going to the entire bottom 60% of taxpayers."
ITEP's new analysis was released as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wrapped up a record-breaking, eight-hour-plus speech against the GOP legislation, which delayed a final vote on the measure. Republicans are expected to pass the unpopular bill on Thursday.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular