There’s not much time left until the presidential elections in Venezuela. Recently, I’ve had an unusual number of discussions about the electoral topic with other fellow bloggers: Iñaki Gainzarain, Alejandro Tarre, Miguel Octavio, Guillermo Salas, and Eric Eckvall. Naturally, we all share concerns about what another “victory” for Hugo Chavez could mean for Venezuela. So far, I’ve identified two clear streams within the opposition world. On one side is the “official” opposition, led by Henrique Capriles Radonsky with the Comando Venezuela and the Mesa de la Unidad, or MUD, consisting of nearly all professional politicians and those aiming to be. The candidate selection for this opposition was democratic. However, the choice of who represents this opposition before the CNE and the electoral strategies were the result of political backdoor dealings among the higher-ups from AD, COPEI, Primero Justicia, Voluntad Popular, and Un Nuevo Tiempo. On the other hand, there’s the unofficial, grassroots opposition, who would vote even for a mentally challenged person just to see the end of the damn Chavez regime. This non-partisan opposition holds, by a significant margin, the majority of votes that the opposing candidate will receive, whoever that may be. Within this group, civil society organizations and electoral scholars reside. I would dare say that the best work done in Venezuela to expose the fraudulent nature of Hugo Chavez’s electoral system has come from members of the unofficial opposition. Unfortunately, there’s no consensus between the two factions regarding electoral matters.
The official stance, based on opinions from individuals with little or no technical expertise, is that the electoral system has been “sufficiently audited,” which is simply not true. At the heart of the issue is the Permanent Electoral Registry, which hasn’t been properly audited since 2005. The so-called audits conducted were done by the CNE in closed processes, where the official opposition has no voice, sight, or votes regarding methodology. Political party representatives are merely invited from time to time by the CNE to sign off on the results of audits they’ve never witnessed. This is concerning because no one in the opposition, nor universities, political parties, or civil society NGOs know for sure if the nearly 19 million voters that the CNE claims exist in the REP really do, if they live where they are presumed to live, and if they possess the identification documents that identify them. Taking the REP at face value as announced by the CNE is an act of faith. Nothing more, nothing less. Let those who wish to believe in such things do so.
Further, the voting system hasn’t been properly audited since 2005. During an audit process held in Fila de Mariches in November 2005, attended by observers from the European Union and the OAS, a technician named Leopoldo Gonzalez ran a program on a computer connected to one of the Smartmatic machines after a mock voting concluded, and started announcing out loud how each participant had voted. Jorge Rodriguez, who was present, immediately halted the process. After that, the opposition parties decided to withdraw once it was demonstrated that the secrecy of the ballot was compromised. That was the last and only time the opposition has been allowed to touch Hugo Chavez’s lottery machines.
Since then, many elections have occurred, and the common denominator remains unchanged: the opposition is not permitted to investigate the system, end of story. Of course, audits of ballots are conducted in places where there are witnesses. However, the opposition finds itself at the mercy of the electoral ministry, rather than as a legitimate participant in the contest. I want to clarify that my intention has never been to abandon the game, leaving the field open for the caudillo and his hordes of resentful criminals. No. We must play. But in a struggle where there inevitably needs to be more than one fighter, the other must demand conditions. It’s not about adopting radical stances. No. It’s about claiming rights, about demanding that the law be respected. Nothing more. This attitude irritates the official opposition, and in their muddled manicheism, they label it as radical. In other words, for the official opposition, claiming rights is synonymous with radicalism. That’s how disconnected or desperate they are.
In any case, we have an electoral crab ahead of us. But, as the campaign slogan goes, there is a way, and that is to ensure we have witnesses in all centers, especially in those places where the opposition has never had a presence, as well as in areas where they typically have. Let me explain. My mother died on October 15, 1983, in San Sebastian, Spain. That was nearly 29 years ago. Nevertheless, my mother is still registered as a voter in the REP, at a center located in liberated territory: El Cafetal. You might wonder why I call it liberated territory? Very simply, El Cafetal, according to CNE data, is the electoral parish in Venezuela with the fewest pro-Chavez votes. If we are to believe those figures, only 6.6% of 31,439 votes cast during the 2010 parliamentary elections were for Chavez.
Now let’s take a look at the opposite end, in areas where Chavez garners the most votes: Delta Amacuro. One would think they’d follow the rules, but no, the Chavistas don’t understand that. Thus, we see places like the Francisco Aniceto Lugo parish, where Chavez receives 99.8% of the votes (see addendum II). Not a damn joke! Just like Fidel! He didn’t even achieve those results back in 1998 when the military coupster could have been given the benefit of the doubt. Of course, he gets 99.8% of the votes because the opposition does not have, and likely never has had, witnesses in that parish. But let’s return to the previous topic: how will my mother vote? How can the opposition know that her vote wasn’t for Chavez? More importantly, how can they verify if that voter—whose vote would appear attributed to that electoral center—actually exists? The fingerprint scanners wouldn’t prevent someone using my mother’s details from voting. The only way to prevent this would have been by auditing the REP, right?
The official opposition has claimed that the CNE has been cleaning the REP, that the dead have been removed, etc. No one knows how many there are, and perhaps it’s not many. However, in elections where a single vote could define Venezuela’s future, we must, without a doubt, eliminate all possibilities of fraud. In centers where Chavez wins with impossible percentages, let’s say more than 75%, there are 613,462 voters. If we break this down by percentages:
286,249 voters in centers where Chavez receives between 75% and 80%
270,015 voters in centers where Chavez receives between 80% and 90%
57,198 voters in centers where Chavez receives between 90% and 100%
Why do I say impossible percentages? Because there has never been an election in Venezuela with zero abstention. Therefore, if we add the pro-Chavez votes over 75% with those of the opposition (there must be some) and the abstention, it’s logical to conclude that those results are fraudulent. We are talking, dear readers, about fraud in a universe of 613,462 votes.
To conclude, Comando Venezuela claims to be better prepared than ever. Those who believe in fairy tales say this is supposedly foolproof (let’s hope it’s not like the RR 2004…). Regarding an article on Miguel’s blog, I left a comment this morning.
Note the number of centers where the opposition won on the left side: 1,002 (urban Venezuela). Compare it with the number of centers where Chavismo won on the right side: 3,811 (rural Venezuela). The ratio is almost 1 to 4, meaning for every center where the opposition wins, there are 4 centers where fraud is practically assured due to the absence of witnesses. In other words, of nearly 5,000 centers, the opposition knows for sure that the results of 1,002 of them, or about 20%, accurately reflect the will of the voters.
Another thing that caught my attention from the graph is the levels of abstention. If in the 3,811 pro-Chavez centers the abstention was 36%, how can Chavismo obtain more than 75% of the votes? If we look at the electoral map (parliamentary elections 2010), we can see, as I mentioned before, a universe of 613,462 voters in centers where Chavismo receives more than 75% of the votes. The graph indicates that there are 2,500,000 voters in each group. How does that add up?
I hope the official opposition knows what they’re doing. I hope they manage to prevent fraud. And I hope their subservient attitude towards the electoral ministry translates into an electoral victory.
Addendum: to clarify some doubts about whether it is possible for Chavismo to obtain more than 75% of the votes in certain centers, I must say the following:
In centers where abstention is at 36%, it is impossible for Chavez to obtain more than 75% of the total registered voters in that center.
In other words: if a center has 100 voters, and the abstention is 36%, there are 64 votes left. Out of those, Chavez could potentially receive more than 75% of the votes (from the 64 votes, that’s 48 votes).
What isn’t possible is for Chavez to get more than 75% of all registered voters (that is, from 100, not from 64), which is the case in the centers I have referred to, like Francisco Aniceto Lugo. It is impossible for Chavez to receive 75, 80, or 99 votes in an election where only 64 people participated. And since it doesn’t make any sense, I added up all the voters in centers where Chavismo got the percentages mentioned and found that he derives those percentages from the total registered voters, not from the total participants in the election! We’re talking about a universe of 613,462 voters.
*Data from the CNE via ESDATA, via electoral map from D. Kronick, C. Font, J. Rodriguez Rivas.
**Graph by Roberto Picón from Comando Venezuela.
Addendum II, 24.08.2012, 08:41 GMT: I just realized that the data from the electoral map by D. Kronick, C. Font, J. Rodriguez Rivas, differs somewhat from the published by ESDATA. Using the Francisco Aniceto Lugo parish as an example from the 2010 parliamentary results, Kronick, Font, and Rodriguez Rivas’s electoral map indicates that the parish has 1,395 registered voters, but ESDATA states the number is 1,705.