After
weeks of imperialist threats and opposition violence, the elections
for the Constituent Assembly (ANC) in Venezuela took place on July
30th. The result was a massive turnout of over 8 million voters,
around 41% of the electorate, which gave chavismo a much-needed shot
in the arm. The western media reacted by trying to dispute the number
and sticking even closer to the narrative being pushed by the
opposition and the US State Department. With the opposition
scrambling and US authorities bringing more sanctions and threats, it
is now chavismo that has the political initiative. The Constituent
Assembly will not solve everything by itself, but it is a tremendous
opportunity to push the Bolivarian Revolution forward.
Part
1 - A tale of two elections
On July 16th
the Venezuelan opposition held a “consultation” in which it
called on its supporters to symbolically reject the Constituent
Assembly, appeal for military coup and support a so-called “national
unity” government. Here is how Associated Press reported on the
turnout:
“The
opposition said 7.6 million Venezuelans participated in Sunday’s
symbolic referendum, which the government labelled an internal party
poll with no relevance for the country.”
There is no
mention of the fact that people were free to vote more than once,
that no electoral roll was used and that no audit was possible
because everything was burned at the end of the day. Apart from this,
in a recent article we explored other reasons why this total was very
doubtful, based on simple estimations given the number of voting
booths available. A phone conversation between opposition leaders in
Aragua state also revealed how the numbers were being cooked.
In contrast,
Sunday’s elections had the full weight of the electoral authorities
behind them, over 12.000 voting centres and 24.000 voting booths, and
the approval of international monitors. The main obstacle was the
opposition’s violence, and so additional voting centres, such as
the Caracas Poliedro pavilion, were set up for people who were not
able to vote in their own neighbourhoods. Pictures showed voting
queues forming since early morning and the voting deadline was
extended so everyone could vote.
It is also
worth reminding how the Venezuelan voting system is as close to
foolproof as it gets. Voters access voting machines using their
fingerprints, exercise their vote electronically, and then a paper
ballot is printed. The voter checks that it matches the vote he/she
just made and places this paper ballot in a box. Once the voting is
done, a random audit of voting centres is made to ensure that the
paper ballot tally matches the electronic tally to a margin of 0.1%.
In particular, a big discrepancy between the voting totals, paper and
electronic, would stand out immediately. And yet, this is how
Associated Press reported Sunday’s turnout:
“National
Electoral Council President Tibisay Lucena announced just before
midnight that turnout was 41.53 percent, or 8,089,320 people. Members
of the opposition said they believed between 2 million and 3 million
people voted and one well-respected independent analysis put the
number at 3.6 million.”
Based on
what, exactly? If they have evidence they should present it. Some
pictures of empty voting centres in middle-class neighbourhoods,
which for all we know could have been taken the day before, do not
prove anything. Surely, among the thousands of electoral commission
workers, one of them would report that there were 3 times more
electronic votes than paper ballots in his centre. When Donald Trump
claimed that he lost the popular vote because 3 million illegal
immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton the media checked and disproved
the wild claim. But apparently these standards, or any standards for
that matter, do not apply to the Venezuelan opposition.
Source,
links, references:
http://www.investigaction.net/en/venezuela-elections-resurgent-chavismo-and-unrecognised-democracy/
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[2] [3] [4] [5]
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