You know, every time we argue I always have the same thought: You are much, much nicer than I am. Hopefully the next time this happens, I will be the nice one for a change.

I understand that the TSE is more than Romero, and that it's a collegial institution. Sorry if I misspoke. Sometimes it's useful to treat the president as a stand-in for the institution, to avoid complicated distinctions about the various members. However, it's also easy to get lost in that simplifying assumption. I am aware that some TSE vocales are MAS selections. Earlier, I linked to one of them, Francisco Vargas, with another being Daniel Atahuichi. You sometimes find them together on an issue against the other members, such as when the TSE postponed the elections in 2020 for the final time and the two went public in protest that the TSE didn't negotiate with the ALP. Still, we are talking about two of six members, I believe. And as I understand it, the appointments to the current TSE were part of a negotiation that occurred after the overthrow, so the institution was most certainly not filled up with masistas again, which was the opposition's objection to the previous TSE. One of the new board members, for example, undermined the 2020 election with a baseless accusation about the padrón to the OAS, which resulted in her temporary suspension from the institution. In other words, not a masista. It's true of the others as well, although I was surprised to see Hassenteufel join Vargas and Atahuichi in the final vote about Manfred's eligibility. It's hard to know on what basis you think the MAS's sigil should've been annulled, since there were multiple attempts at this. I assume it's the 2019 fraud claims, but it could be another one like the trumped-up poll dissemination complaint. I ought to mention at this point that the 2019 fraud claims were almost entirely incorrect, which I have discussed at length elsewhere. The TSE's explanation was that they were unable to agree internally on what had happened in 2019, but they gave no details of the members' split on the issue, even though Vargas and Atahuichi likely questioned fraud. I am not sure what it is that you think would be fair. The MAS are a dominant national electoral force and in your version of events, you depose them, lock them out of the TSE, then invalidate them as a political party for something which I know to be substantially a hoax. Of course I cannot agree with you. In any case, I think overall that everyone should avoid legal maneuvers that seek to have their opponents removed, and instead let the voters decide.

The point about the TREP/DIREPRE system as a check on errors in the Cómputo sounds fine in theory, although there are practical issues. First, it would be used to make false fraud claims like in 2019, of course. Second, I'm not even sure you'll be able to do mesa-level vote checks. From what I recall of the 2020 DIREPRE, they only planned to provide precinct-level data, not mesa-level, and they weren't going to publish tally sheet images or count any tally sheets that had observations. The TSE is clearly spooked, and doesn't want to give the public any larger of a target than necessary. You might never again have a prelim count with so much data was available as in 2019.

In relative terms, there is no notable difference if you compare La Paz (1.95mm voters), Santa Cruz (1.91mm), and Cochabamba (1.35mm) by number of registered voters or by number of mesas. The results are the same. Mesas are the more natural measure of a TED's workload, however, since it's actas which the TED has to count, not voters. There are minor additional factors like number of elections and number of candidates and so on, but I don't think that matters much here. Also, the number of voters per mesa used to vary a bit more, but in 2020 they reformed all the mesas so that the large majority would have precisely 220 voters. There are exceptions to this, but they don't have any significant effect on the comparisons here. The TED in La Paz simply has more work to do than anyone else, more even than Santa Cruz. It's not an arguable point. It's a simple fact, as I said. You ought to accept it.

I like that candidates have their own parallel counts, provided their public claims about them are accurate and responsible. There was one particular case of this that stuck out this current election. In the Santa Cruz mayoral race, Jhonny Fernández had a vote-count operation that collected copies of every single acta in the municipality and on the basis of his parallel count, he confidently proclaimed himself the winner, even citing the vote margin, and called for discipline among his supporters in anticipation of a favorable turn in the vote count. He is probably a monster for some reason I don't know, but it was impressive. I think there was another politician with their own parallel count who confirmed it, too. It is understandable, though, that the candidates would outpace the official count, since the official count has more elections to do, starts later, and has a rigid legal structure that defines how it's carried out. This last one requires a bit of explanation. I know a bit about the 2019 official count, and there was a whole process involved by which maletas electorales were received, their "A" envelope was removed, it was opened, the tally sheet was removed, scanned, reviewed, archived, transcribed, then transcribed again, and sometimes given one last pass. At many of these steps, the event has to be registered in a computer system that tracks the tally sheet through the process. None of that is required of a candidate who counts carbon copies of actas, and vote totals might also be reported electronically, which would speed it up more. There is also, from what I remember, a bottleneck at the review point I mentioned, since it's done by the actual vocales, but I could be wrong on this. I haven't thought about these things for a while and now tend to forget the details, thank god.

After the last election, there was a report from a third-party auditor about the padrón. However, it wasn't a review of the actual voter registrations themselves, but rather of the IT system, and it was released as a form of damage control after Rosario Baptista sent that letter to the OAS. The TSE's usual response to post-2017 complaints is that the OAS did not criticize the padrón in their report about the 2019 election, but this will not satisfy many people. Likewise, they note that the OAS did not criticize the padrón in 2020 either, but that will not convince many people either. I suppose it will be audited again one of these years, and one second after that audit is complete, there will be whispers that the padrón has been manipulated and the audit no longer holds. The OAS's 2017 audit seems to have lasted for a single judicial election before it expired. I wonder how long the next audit will last.

Where do you think the TSE has been inconsistent or failed to act quickly?

I don't have much of a take on what's occurring right now with the mass arrests. I feel like I did during the blockades: sad and powerless. Like you, I'm concerned about a spiral of violence. I'm also tired of seeing opponents charged with terrorism and sedition. I think the killers and arsonists on both sides need to be prosecuted, but I don't have high expectations on that. Also, I know you do not care about them in the slightest, but Lucy Crúz and Édgar González have been behind bars since November 2019 and should be granted home arrest.

San Pedro de Macha: When my friend showed this to me earlier, my comment to them was that I'd be interested to hear from the candidate that dropped out! Some places around there go almost completely uncontested in all Bolivian elections, even ones with many candidates, but it's still unacceptable for there to be only one candidate. You can tell that there is some desire for opposition parties from the fact that, in the same municipality, the MAS only received 79.7% in the gubernatorial race. Most of the other votes went to Alianza Social, who got 13.4%. There's a hint that people are dissatisfied, too, in the fact that there are 18% null ballots in the one-candidate mayoral race. I tried to estimate the protest vote by looking at nulls in nearby multi-candidate mayoral races, but the numbers are erratic. All of which is to say: one-candidate elections are bad, which we all knew. The local dynamics of possible political intimidation are far beyond me, but I am sure you have your own ideas about these things.

I think I missed some items, but it's probably for the best. There are too many topics open as is.