Cuidemos el Voto

A vote only counts if it is counted honestly. Ahead of Bolivia's pivotal 2025 elections, Cuidemos el Voto, an initiative financed by the Jucumari Foundation, built the largest citizen observation effort in the country's history: more than 60,000 volunteers trained in electoral law, nonviolence, and vote watching, deployed across all nine departments and among Bolivians abroad. On election day they stood watch at polling stations nationwide, digitized and verified thousands of tally sheets, and ran a parallel count that matched the official result. When 148 irregularities were documented, they were escalated to international observation missions within 48 hours. The night before the first round, partisans raided a monitoring center in La Paz, trying to discredit the effort. It didn't work. Bolivians voted, the count held, and power changed hands peacefully. This is what it looks like when citizens refuse to be spectators.