The recent regional elections held on October 15 in
Venezuela, have sparked a new wave of controversy around Venezuelan elections
and the legitimacy of its results.
Andres Velasquez, who was the opposition candidate for the
southern state of Bolivar, is crying foul and claims to have physical copies of
all tally reports to back his claim. According to Velasquez, the printed
machine tallying reports show thousands of more votes for him than the National
Elections Council (CNE in Spanish) website shows.
As reported by Anatoly Kurmanaev for the
Wall Street Journal, Luis Lander, director of the Venezuelan Electoral
Observatory, a nonpartisan group in Caracas that tracks elections stated “There’s
clear manipulation here,” after he examined voting-machine receipts that the
opposition alliance posted online. “The results were altered to allow the
losing candidate to be declared the winner,” he added.
Although the evidence presented seems conclusive, the truth
is that fraud accusations should not come as a surprise. “Crying fraud is an
extremely familiar routine to the Venezuelan opposition, and one that it has
pursued at virtually every election since 1999,” wrote Rachael Boothroyd Rojas
on venezuelanalysis.com.
David Smilde, a US scholar who has followed the political
struggles in Venezuela, recently penned
an article asking authorities and opposition parties come up with good
answers to explain what has transpired through the press. He emphasized that “Both
the CNE and the MUD have the ability to significantly clarify what happened and
they should do so as soon as possible.”
Describing the electronic voting system used in Venezuela,
and how easy could be to determine who is telling the truth, Smilde commented
“Venezuela’s voting system has a solid system of audits and checks. Fantasies
of secret tabulation rooms that alter the vote can be set aside. Each voter who
votes, gets a paper receipt saying who she voted for, and then deposits it in a
box. After the elections, the citizens who are working at the tables,
representing all parties, count the ballots. Then they check their tabulation
with the act that is printed out from the machine. They sign off on it and the
parties’ witnesses get a copy of it. These acts can then be compared to the
electoral tallies presented by the National Electoral Council (CNE) on their
web page, and any fraud can be detected.”
Further complicating matters, during the National Constituency
election held in August 2017, the CEO of Smartmatic, the company that had provided
the electronic voting solution for all election since 2004, denounced
that the turnout figures published by authorities had been manipulated by at
least one million. Authorities disregarded the accusation as pure nonsense and
proceeded to organize these latest elections with new technology providers.
Francisco Toro, from Caracas Chronicle, thinks
“Venezuela’s machine-based electoral system has many, deep problems, but one
key redeeming feature: it can be audited.” Questions are looming over
Venezuela’s electronic voting system. It is time to act, and audit the tallying
reports to find out what happened and clear all doubts. The future of a nation
formerly regarded as a democracy beacon is at stake.
