Maduro Hangs On In Venezuela

As the saying goes, Socialists: You can vote them in, but you have to shoot them out. We’re watching an extreme example of that saying play out right now in Venezuela.

The U.S. press seems remarkably uninterested in events in Venezuela following its presidential election held July 28. Likely that’s because those events show just how much a determined election fixer can get away with when he controls all the levers of power in a country and is in a position to block and stymie any investigation into election fraud. There are clear lessons from that for the upcoming U.S. election, lessons that the press would prefer not be learned.

First, a review of where we are. Last October, the Biden administration granted Venezuela major sanctions relief on its oil and other exports in return for a promise to hold a free and fair election. The election got scheduled for July 28. President Maduro and his regime then proceeded to take every conceivable step to undermine the fairness of the election: they prevented the opposition leader (Maria Machado) from registering as a candidate; then they similarly disqualified her initial designated successor; they jailed numerous opposition figures who were critical of the government; they allowed multiple minor candidates to register to attempt to split any opposition vote; they used their control of the press and television to effectively suppress any campaigning by the opposition; and so on. Back in April, recognizing what was going on, the Biden administration re-imposed most of the sanctions.

Despite the blatant and heavy-handed rigging, as the election approached it looked like the third opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, was way ahead. From the Miami Herald, July 28 (as voting was ongoing): “Most credible independent polls give Gonzalez a 30-point-plus lead over Maduro.” On the night of the election, after the polls had closed, opposition leader Machado claimed that Gonzalez had won 70% of the vote based on independent exit polls.

And then, just after midnight on Monday July 29, Venezuela’s National Election Commission — fully controlled by Maduro — announced the “official” results: Maduro had won with 51% of the vote! This is one of the most preposterously rigged elections of all time.

In the week plus since the election, the evidence of pervasive fraud by the Maduro has become ever more extensive. The opposition had had volunteer observers in most to all of the polling places, and obtained copies of the voting tally sheets at each such location. They made copies of the tally sheets and uploaded them on a website. The uploaded tally sheets represent about 80% of the voting machines, and show a sufficient margin in favor of Gonzalez that he would win even if Maduro won every single vote cast at the remaining 20% of machines.

Meanwhile, Maduro and the Election Commission have refused to release precinct-level vote tallies. They claim they are prevented from doing so because there was an incident of “hacking” from hackers in North Macedonia. Sure.

On August 4, the Washington Post, to its credit, published the results of its independent review of the polling sheets uploaded by the opposition. Excerpt:

Venezuela’s opposition candidate likely received more than twice as many votes as President Nicolás Maduro in the country’s election last week, according to a Washington Post review of more than 23,000 precinct-level tally sheets collected by the opposition, a sample that represents nearly 80 percent of voting machines nationwide. That conclusion, which echoes the results of independent exit polling and similar independent analyses, offers further evidence against the authoritarian socialist’s claim that he defeated challenger Edmundo González in the July 28 vote.

The Post provides this link to the vote totals as uploaded and reported by the opposition. Note that that page contains a further link to the raw voting data by polling place.

The Post further notes that similar conclusions have been reached by the Associated Press and by the Carter Center, which conducted their own reviews. Also, an exit poll was conducted by Edison Research of New Jersey on Election Day, which “indicated that González captured 65 percent of the vote to Maduro’s 31 percent.”

The Post summarizes the response of the Venezuelan government as follows:

Maduro has claimed a cyberattack has prevented the government from releasing precinct-level results. He has not provided evidence of the attack. Election experts who observed the system on July 28 and an auditor consulted by The Post said the system did not suffer a disruption that would have affected the transmission of results.

On August 1, the U.S. State Department published this statement. Excerpt:

[T]he processing of th[e] votes and the announcement of results by the Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) were deeply flawed, yielding an announced outcome that does not represent the will of the Venezuelan people. The CNE’s rapid declaration of Nicolás Maduro as the winner of the presidential election came with no supporting evidence.  The CNE still has not published disaggregated data or any of the vote tally sheets, despite repeated calls from Venezuelans and the international community to do so. 

Needless to say, at this writing, Maduro remains fully in power. In the initial days after the election, there was some hope that the military and/or police would abandon Maduro, but that has not occurred, at least not yet. Over the past weekend, there were reports that thousands of opposition figures had been arrested, and that both Machado and Gonzalez had gone into hiding.

Could any country possibly support Maduro at this point? Of course, it’s the usual collection of losers: Russia, China, Iran and Cuba.

I just hope that the Trump campaign and the Republican Party are competent enough at least to follow the lead of the Venezuelan opposition in combating fraud. Here, our voting manipulation problem is mostly confined to a handful of blue cities in swing states: Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania; Detroit and Flint in Michigan; Milwaukee and Madison in Wisconsin; and Atlanta in Georgia. A full-on blitz of observers in those places would be very valuable.