By Frank Bajak
President Evo Morales, a coca-grower at odds with Washington but hugely popular at home for empowering Bolivia's long-suppressed indigenous majority, was expected to coast to re-election.
Such a victory would augur further revolutionary change, though opponents say they fear Morales will use a consolidation of power to trample human rights and deepen state control of the economy.
Voters were also choosing a new Congress, with Morales' stridently leftist Movement Toward Socialism hoping for a two-thirds majority so it can dictate terms of a law on indigenous territorial self-rule.
A super-majority would also give the 50-year-old incumbent the votes needed to amend the constitution so he could run for a third straight term, though he has been evasive on the issue.
"We'll always back Evo Morales' government because he takes into account the poor," said Ramiro Cano, a 40-year-old jeweller and a member of Bolivia's dominant Aymara ethnic group who voted to give Morales five more years in office.
Cano praised Morales especially for the annual subsidy his two children receive for attending school. "He's been a great help not just for me but for all families in need."
Nearly six of 10 Bolivians live in poverty.
A victory by Morales, who led opinion polls with about 55 percent support, would extend the stability he has brought to a country notorious for coups and that had five presidents in the five years preceding his December 2005 election.
The vote comes under a new constitution ratified by voters in January that allowed Morales to run for a second term and that remade Bolivia as a "plurinational" state, allowing self-rule for the poor South American country's 36 native peoples.
Twelve of Bolivia's more than 330 municipalities were voting Sunday on indigenous autonomy, which would allow them to abandon modern political structures in favour of traditional Indian governance based on consensus-building.
Still to be defined by the new Congress are larger territorial autonomies for indigenous groups that could redraw the political map and redefine how government funds are disbursed.
Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, voted Sunday in the central coca-growing region of Chapare.
"The decision is for change," he told reporters afterward.
The llama-herder's son and coca-growers' union rabble-rouser has championed all of Bolivia's Indians - at the expense of wealthy ranchers and farmers centred in the eastern lowlands. He has been careful, however, not to alienate too many landholders with a land redistribution program in which confiscation of fallow land has been modest.
Pre-election polls put Morales far out in front of his nearest competitor in a field of nine candidates. Manfred Reyes, a former military officer and state governor associated with the previous discredited ruling class, had 20 percent support. His running mate is in jail, accused of backing a massacre of Morales supporters in 2008 as a state governor.
A more centrist opposition candidate, cement magnate Samuel Doria Medina, was running third with about 10 percent support.
"The right hasn't been able to come up with anything that is new or inspires confidence," said Kathy Ledebur, an analyst who runs the non-profit Andean Information Network.
Morales, meanwhile, has used profits from the country's natural gas industry, which he nationalised in May 2006, to provide the highly popular subsidies for schoolchildren, as well as new mothers and the elderly.
Benefiting from higher prices for the natural gas and minerals that account for the bulk of Bolivia's exports, the economy grew 6 percent last year and is on track for a 3 percent rise in 2009.
Morales' detractors say he is taking Bolivia down what they consider the same ruinous totalitarian socialist path as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, while similarly forging dangerous alliances with Iran and Russia.
"He's created a tyranny," said Mario Orellana, a 65-year-old retired army colonel who said he voted for Reyes. "He does what he likes. There's not democracy."
Besides tightening state control over the gas, oil and mining sectors, Morales has nationalised the main phone company and signalled his intention to take over the electrical power industry.
"Sooner or later he'll nationalise the banks," said Victor Hugo Cardenas, a former vice president and Morales critic whose house was ransacked by a pro-Morales mob earlier this year.
But many analysts believe Morales will be careful not to alienate the foreign investors he needs to increase raw materials output - they just won't be able to own the mines and wells.
Last month, Bolivia received a pledge of a US$1.5 billion investment from the Spanish-Argentine company Repsol for natural gas development.
Relations with the United States, meanwhile, have been rocky.
Morales expelled the US ambassador and the Drug Enforcement Administration in late 2008 for allegedly inciting his political opposition.
In a speech on Saturday, Morales claimed Bolivia is confiscating more cocaine now than it did when the DEA was active in the country. UN figures show that cocaine production is up, however, from an estimated 80 metric tons in 2005 to 103 metric tons last year.
AP