Barred from Bolivia's elections, former President Morales campaigns hard for invalid votes

New Indian Express

8 hours ago

EL ALTO: Barred from appearing on Sunday's ballot, former leftist president Evo Morales has launched a scrappy campaign for a presidential contender with no name, no face and no formal platform.
The contender's known as 'Nulo" — Spanish for the null-and-void vote.
Nulo has a reliable base in Bolivia, where voting is compulsory.
For many years, voters disillusioned with Morales' increasingly high-handed attempts to prolong his presidency over three consecutive terms defaced their ballots or left them blank.
Supporters of Morales to declare their votes null
But with the coca-farming union leader disqualified from the race and seeking to distance himself from the unpopular President Luis Arce and other leftists associated with Bolivia's worst economic crisis in four decades, Morales has emerged as Nulo's greatest champion.
'Brothers, we are on the right track. Absenteeism, blank ballots, undecided voters, all of it,' Morales told Radio Kawsachun Coca, his media outlet in the Bolivian jungle of Chapare, where he has been holed up for months among fiercely loyal coca-growing labor unions.
If Morales leaves his tropical stronghold, he risks arrest on charges related to statutory rape. He denies the allegations.
'Nulo is where we belong,' he said, urging voters to scratch, scribble and sketch on their ballots. 'We've already won here.'
But under Bolivian law, Nulo cannot win the elections— nor trigger a redo. Because authorities must remove spoiled and blank ballots from the final count, a surge by Nulo would give all the candidates a boost without affecting the distribution of votes.