Barred from Bolivia's elections, ex-leader Morales campaigns hard for invalid votes

EL ALTO, Bolivia (AP) — 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.

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.

Morales is betting that an unusually high proportion of votes for Nulo would embarrass the right-wing front-runners, former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga and businessman Samuel Doria Medina, undermine the credibility of the consequential election and extend his own political relevance.

“Evo wants to be in the election and say, ‘This is my vote ... I’m the winner without even having participated,'" said political analyst Carlos Saavedra.

Morales' bid for Nulo comes after the iconic leftist leader, like other Latin American populists of his generation, exhausted a range of tactics to stay in power.

To run for a third term in 2014, Morales changed the Constitution’s two-consecutive-term limit and stacked the top courts with his supporters.

To run for a fourth term in 2019, he found a way around a referendum blocking his bid. That last attempt six years ago led to Morales resigning under pressure from the military and fleeing into exile as violent protests erupted over his disputed reelection.

This time, with his ally-turned-rival Arce in power, Morales had all the cards — rather, courts — stacked against him.

The ex-president's power struggle with Arce splintered his once-dominant Movement Toward Socialism.

Although running with a different faction, Senate President Andrónico Rodríguez represents the MAS party's best hope.

But support for Rodríguez, a coca-farming union activist like Morales, has declined in recent weeks as an accelerating currency crisis stokes outrage at the long-dominant MAS party.

Morales' followers can appear even more disgusted with the left than with the right-wing establishment that their leader built his career opposing.

"Evo Morales taught Andrónico everything he knows, and Andrónico stabbed him in the back. How can we trust a candidate like that?" asked Wendy Chipana, a 28-year-old volunteer at a Nulo campaign office in El Alto, the sprawling city of rural migrants overlooking Bolivia’s capital of La Paz.

“We only have one candidate, Evo Morales. That’s why we’re deciding not to cast a single valid vote.”

As anger flared in June over Morales' disqualification, his supporters blocked highways and clashed with police in unrest that left eight dead. Morales warned that the country would “convulse” should Sunday's election proceed.

Yet in recent weeks he has changed his tune, urging his followers to register their frustration through the ballot box.

Nulo campaigners are asking voters to get creative.

Chipana distributes decals of Morales' face that voters can stick on their ballots.

Retired professor Martha Cruz, 67, says she’ll mark hers with a large X. Diego Aragon, 32, a coca farmer in Chapare, plans to paste a coca leaf on his paper in a nod to Morales' legalization of the medicinal plant, maligned during the U.S.-backed war on drugs as the base product in cocaine.

Clothing vendor Daniela Cusi, 44, wants to take her time in the voting booth.

“I’m going to bring paint and draw his pretty little face all over,” she said.

With just days to go before the election, Nulo is drawing even some of Morales’ detractors who prefer to vote for nothing than back any of the uncharismatic candidates.

“I’m done with Evo, but I have no information about these other candidates,” said Diana Mamani, 30, selling shivering lambs at a market in the far reaches of El Alto. “The right-wing spends all this money on propaganda but they haven’t bothered to come out here.”

The two right-wing candidates, Quiroga and Doria Medina, have run for president and lost three times before.

Despite disenchantment over his autocratic tendencies, sexual abuse cases and profligate state spending, Morales, as Bolivia's first Indigenous president, retains a level of fervent support that no other candidate can claim.

“I look in the mirror and realize I am just like him,” said Cristina Sonco, 43, a worker at the scenic cable car linking La Paz to El Alto, one of the many infrastructure projects Morales built as president. Like Morales, Sonco is an Aymara, the Indigenous group forming the majority of Bolivia’s population.

Recalling how his presidency reduced inequality and increased her rights in a country historically dominated by a white and mestizo, or mixed-race, elite, she started to weep.

“He's like a father to me," she said. “Not like these other candidates.”

The light-skinned, Western-educated Quiroga and Doria Medina represent the same ruling class that Morales swept aside when he first rode to power in 2005, vowing to bury 20 years of pro-Washington, free-market policies that failed to lift Bolivians out of poverty.

Twenty years later, Bolivia finds itself at the end of another historic cycle. Prices are rising and fuel is scarce. Families can no longer access their dollar savings.

In some ways, analysts say, Sunday's elections could leave Morales right back where he started.

“I think that's why Morales is pushing for Nulo, not a left-wing vote,” said Aymara author Quya Reyna. “It would suit him for the right-wing to come to power.”

After all, Morales' past five years spent bickering with his former protégé wasn't a great look for the maverick leader, Reyna said, adding:

“He's much more comfortable confronting neoliberal administrations. That would lend him social legitimacy, even if he's not in the government or Congress."

A woman walks past a campaign center for supporters of former President Evo Morales who are in favor or a null vote in the upcoming presidential election in El Alto, Bolivia, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Guido Ramirez, supporters of former President Evo Morales, stands near a poster of Morales at a campaign center for Morales supporters who are in favor of a null vote in the upcoming presidential election in El Alto, Bolivia, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Stickers of former President Evo Morales sit on a table at a campaign center for supporters in favor of a null vote in the upcoming presidential elections in El Alto, Bolivia, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Wendy Chipana, a supporter of former President Evo Morales, gives an interview as she campaigns for a null vote in the upcoming presidential elections in El Alto, Bolivia, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An ailing astronaut returned to Earth with three others on Thursday, ending their space station mission more than a month early in NASA’s first medical evacuation.

SpaceX guided the capsule to a middle-of-the-night splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego, less than 11 hours after the astronauts exited the International Space Station.

“It’s so good to be home,” said NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, the capsule commander.

It was an unexpected finish to a mission that began in August and left the orbiting lab with only one American and two Russians on board. NASA and SpaceX said they would try to move up the launch of a fresh crew of four; liftoff is currently targeted for mid-February.

Cardman and NASA’s Mike Fincke were joined on the return by Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov. Officials have refused to identify the astronaut who had the health problem or explain what happened, citing medical privacy.

While the astronaut was stable in orbit, NASA wanted them back on Earth as soon as possible to receive proper care and diagnostic testing. The entry and splashdown required no special changes or accommodations, officials said, and the recovery ship had its usual allotment of medical experts on board. It was not immediately known when the astronauts would fly from California to their home base in Houston. Platonov’s return to Moscow was also unclear.

NASA stressed repeatedly over the past week that this was not an emergency. The astronaut fell sick or was injured on Jan. 7, prompting NASA to call off the next day’s spacewalk by Cardman and Fincke, and ultimately resulting in the early return. It was the first time NASA cut short a spaceflight for medical reasons. The Russians had done so decades ago.

The space station has gotten by with three astronauts before, sometimes even with just two. NASA said it will be unable to perform a spacewalk, even for an emergency, until the arrival of the next crew, which has two Americans, one French and one Russian astronaut.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

This screengrab from video provided by NASA shows the NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 capsule being taken into the recovery vessel after crew members re entered the earth in a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This screengrab from video provided by NASA shows NASA astronaut Mike Fincke getting helped out of the SpaceX Crew-11 capsule after they re-entered the earth in a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This screengrab from video provided by NASA shows NASA Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui being helped out of the SpaceX Crew-11 capsule after they re-entered the earth in a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This screengrab from video provided by NASA shows Russian astronaut Oleg Platonov being helped out of the SpaceX Crew-11 capsule after they re-entered the earth in a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (NASA via AP)

Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, left, NASA astronauts Mike Fincke, Zena Cardman, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui are seen inside the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft onboard the SpaceX recovery ship SHANNON shortly after having landed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Long Beach, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This screengrab from video provided by NASA shows NASA astronaut Zena Cardman being helped out of the SpaceX Crew-11 capsule after they re-entered the earth in a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This screengrab from video provided by NASA TV shows the SpaceX Dragon departing from the International Space Station shortly after undocking with four NASA Crew-11 members inside on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This photo provided by NASA shows clockwise from bottom left are, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui gathering for a crew portrait wearing their Dragon pressure suits during a suit verification check inside the International Space Station’s Kibo laboratory module, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This screengrab from video provided by NASA shows recovery vessels approaching the NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 capsule to evacuate one of the crew members after they re-entered the earth in a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This screengrab from video provided by NASA shows the NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 members re entering the earth in a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This screengrab from video provided by NASA shows the NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 members re entering the earth in a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (NASA via AP)