LA PAZ, Oct 19 (NNN-TELESUR) — Bolivia’s electoral authorities begin releasing official preliminary results of the vote count that is taking place in the country after over 7 million citizens went to the polls Sunday.
After three hours of vote counting, the Supreme Court (TSE) revealed that the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) leads the race for the presidency.
So far, the party has collected 3,866 out of 5,082 valid ballots officially recorded. Of this amount, the MAS has 76.07 percent of popular support until before 8 pm local time.
In second place is the right-wing Citizen Community (CC), the party that lost last year’s election against former president Evo Morales.
CC has received 808 votes in favor, which represents the 15.9 percent of the ballots counted. It is followed by the We Believe Party, which has received 255 votes (5.02 percent).
The vote count began at 17h00 local time, although the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) determined that the voting tables would remain open until the last voter in line had voted.
“This provoked many polling stations to close later,” teleSUR correspondent in Bolivia Freddy Morales explained, adding that this is one cause of the delay in the final official results.
Another motive is that “six of the nine departmental tribunals have not begun the definitive recount of votes because they have not received the voting records from their municipalities yet. Without that document it is not possible to begin the process,” the reporter said. — NNN-TELESUR
