BTN News: The political situation in Venezuela is very tense after the recent presidential election. The opposition, led by María Corina Machado, has put over 24,000 polling reports online. They say these reports are true and show different results from the official ones announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE). The CNE said President Nicolás Maduro won with 51.2% of the vote, while the opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, got 44.2%. But many people inside and outside Venezuela do not trust these results and want to see all the reports to know the real outcome.
The CNE announced Maduro’s win at midnight after the election day, saying they had counted 80% of the votes. But the opposition and some other countries immediately questioned these results. They asked for either all the reports to be made public or for González Urrutia to be recognized as the winner. Important leaders from other countries, like Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, have also expressed their concerns. They stressed the need for transparency and asked for the votes to be verified to ensure a fair election process.
Gustavo Petro said on social media that there are “grave doubts” about the election process. He urged the Venezuelan government to allow the elections to end peacefully with a transparent vote count, showing all the polling reports and letting all political groups and international observers check them. Similarly, Lula da Silva said that the election seemed “normal and calm” but also stressed the need to show the reports to resolve any disputes and keep the election process honest.
The opposition coalition, called the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), claims that their candidate, González Urrutia, actually won with 67.2% of the votes, while Maduro only got 30.4%. They base this on their reports, which cover nearly 82% of the polling stations. María Corina Machado said that even if all the remaining votes were for Maduro, it wouldn’t be enough to change the outcome shown by their data.
In Venezuela, voting is done electronically. Voters use their fingerprints to identify themselves and then vote on machines that record and print their choices. The printed vote is then placed into a ballot box. At the end of the day, these machines produce detailed reports showing the total votes for each candidate, which are signed by election officials and observers. The original reports are securely sent to the CNE, while paper copies are given to party representatives. If a machine is chosen for verification, the digital results are checked against the manual counts from the ballot boxes.
Each report has several security features to prevent fraud. These include a unique hash code and specific timestamps, which are important for confirming their authenticity. These reports are designed to be very secure, with codes that can be independently audited to confirm they are real.
The opposition has created websites like resultadosconvzla.com, where they have uploaded their vote count results and copies of the reports, organized by state, municipality, parish, polling center, and station. Another site, resultadospresidencialesvenezuela2024.com, allows people to enter their ID numbers to see the report from their designated polling station, as long as it is one of the ones the opposition has.
Despite the opposition’s efforts to be transparent and accurate, the CNE has not released the official reports for public verification. This has led to ongoing uncertainty and tension. The opposition says that their detailed documentation of the voting process, backed by thousands of verified reports, shows a very different outcome from the one presented by the CNE.
Publishing these reports is a bold move by the opposition to challenge the official results and demand accountability. The strong security features in each report make it very hard to fake them. But since the CNE has not released their data yet, direct comparisons cannot be made right now. If there are differences between the opposition’s reports and any future reports from the CNE, a full audit, including manual recounts, might be needed to resolve the conflicting claims.
In conclusion, Venezuela’s recent election has shown big challenges in keeping elections transparent and trustworthy. The opposition’s detailed efforts to document and share their results highlight how important it is to have credible and open election processes. As more people call for an independent audit and better oversight, solving this election dispute will need a strong commitment to honesty from everyone involved.
