International observers in Venezuelan election report their findings from yesterday

[Catherina]

Last edited Mon Apr 15, 2013, 06:55 PM - Edit history (1)

Nicole Phillips ?@BuddhistLawyer 3h

- International observers in #Venezuelan election are about to report our findings from yesterday at the CNE. Stay tuned for tweets.

- @NLGIC esteemed member @danielmkovalik about to deliver report of int'l observers in #Venezuelan elections. Stay tuned for tweets.

- The 130 int'l observers w electoral council (CNE) #Venezuela incl former Prez Guatemala & the DR, parliamentarians, top election officials

- UNISORE delegation concluded elections were a triumph for democracy in #Venezuela w technical quality of automated system & security process

- UNISORE called on #Venezuelans to respect the integrity of the vote given the fair election process.

- Council of electoral experts of Latin America CEELA concl #Venezuelan elections complied w int'l standards w transparency & accountability

- CEELA: from a technical standpoint we believe in the #Venezuelan election results presented given all the audits and verification processes.

- CNE observers from Latino countries: #Venezuelan elections highly reliable w accuracy, transparency & speed. Day was organized and peaceful.

- CNE observers from Latino countries said results of #Venezuelan election process by CNE were true and legitimate.

https://twitter.com/BuddhistLawyer/status/323859886914019328


UNISORE = UNASUR

[dipsydoodle]

1. What I would have expected.

[ocpagu]

2. Ouch!

Overwhelming recognition by international observers.

And, coming in a few days, recognition from Unasur/Mercosur.

You're not going anywhere, Capriles.

[Catherina]

3. Meanwhile, representing the rightwing and it's uh sympathizers

For Immediate Release

Monday, April 15, 2013

SENATOR RUBIO URGES VENEZUELA’S INTERIM GOVERNMENT TO ALLOW FOR ELECTION AUDIT

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued the following statement regarding Venezuela’s presidential election:

“The people of Venezuela have now spoken. The interim government is now obligated to ensure that the will of the voters has been expressed in legitimate election results. This obligation includes the conduct of a full and transparent audit of the results, as requested by the opposition coalition. I am troubled by press accounts of fraud and electoral misconduct including uncounted votes.

“I urge Venezuelan authorities to refrain from any steps that may forever tarnish the credibility of the new government, such as rushing to certify the election results ahead of a full and transparent audit of all the votes. I also urge the Obama administration not to endorse the results of the election until the audit has been completed.

“The Venezuelan people should know that the democracies of the Western Hemisphere are watching the electoral review process closely and will seek to hold accountable any individual determined to have disrupted the peaceful conduct of free and fair elections. The United States stands ready to work with those Venezuelans who wish to put their country on the path to a more successful future.”

http://babalublog.com/2013/04/15/sen-marco-rubio-urges-venezuelas-interim-government-to-allow-for-election-audit/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

It's not even up on that lizard's official page yet and the opposition already has it to broadcast.

[Peace Patriot]

13. LOL! 'Senator' Mark Rubio (FL-Diebold) jawing about "legitimate election results"!

[Judi Lynn]

14. The state of Florida should be in prison, starting years before the Bush-Gore election,

having always beem known everywhere as the State with the dirtiest, chronically crooked voting system in the U.S. Good old Banana Republicans.

[center] [/center]

[ocpagu]

16. LOL

Loved your graphic!

[Judi Lynn]

4. This is good news, as expected. Great grab! n/t

[Catherina]

5. I wish I could grab all the congratulations rolling in for President Maduro

each time a new one comes in, you'd think someone had thrown a vat of acid on the Capriles fanatics.

Everyone's a traitor to them. President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia is the latest on their list.

The beginnings of this thing would be so funny if we didn't know where it's headed from having seen this script so many times.

It's not even 8pm and they're already blocking highways in Altamira, hurling chunks of concrete and stones in Caracas, laying down on the highways. Sooner or later one of those little shits is going to get hurt and that's all they're waiting for.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Exactly right. After years of highly protected guarimbas, bringing their slingshots to shoot

marbles into the brains of innocent people caught unaware, like the man they murdered in cold blood during one of their little "hating Hugo" sprees, after years of gathering in the local shopping malls, painting their puffy little hands white, rolling pieces of duct tape across their nasty little mouths to claim their voices had been silenced, posing for their group photo ops on the escalators, going on their highly publicized but short hunger fasts, they have decided to go for it "bigger" time, after all these years of acting out and making silly asses of themselves.

[Catherina]

6. UNASUR unequivocally stands by the official results

Sunday, 14 April 2013 06:15
AddThis

4:48 PM EDT: As opposed to the response from the White House and from the Organization of American States (OAS), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has unequivocally stood by the official results from last night. UNASUR, which sent an election monitoring delegation to Venezuela, said in part:

Regarding the official electoral results released yesterday, UNASUR’s Electoral Accompaniment Mission declares—as it has since its installation in the country— that the results announced should be respected because they were emitted by the National Electoral Council, the only competent authority in these matters according to the constitutional and legal provisions of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

You can read the whole statement here (in Spanish).


4:47 PM EDT: In a Q&A on the Washington Office on Latin America’s (WOLA) Venezuela Politics and Human Rights blog, Professor David Smilde offers this analysis of a potential audit:

It is unlikely that an audit of paper ballots would show a different result from the electronic tally. The paper ballots are actually produced by the machine itself when a citizen votes. This system was developed at a time in which there was a lot of distrust in the idea of electronically tabulating and transmitting the votes. The paper ballot was a backup. But the electronic machines have been audited many times by international, national and opposition technicians. More likely to affect the vote totals will be inclusion of the international vote (which will be overwhelming for Capriles) and addressing the 3,000 irregularities the opposition says it has documented. Even then, however, the vote’s outcome is unlikely to be reversed.

With regards to the U.S. role in the post-election environment, Smilde writes that “the U.S. would do well to stay on the sidelines.”


4:46 PM EDT: White House spokesperson Jay Carney told a news briefing that an audit of all votes cast is “necessary.” Reuters reported Carney’s statement regarding the election as follows:

"Given the tightness of the result - around 1 percent of the votes cast separate the candidates - the opposition candidate and at least one member of the electoral council have called for a 100 percent audit of the results," White House spokesman Jay Carney told a news briefing.

"This appears an important, prudent and necessary step to ensure that all Venezuelans have confidence in these results," Carney said. "In our view rushing to a decision in these circumstances would be inconsistent with the expectations of Venezuelans for a clear and democratic outcome."

Mark Weisbrot responded to the news with a blog post on CEPR’s Americas Blog, in which he called the White House move "ominous." Weisbrot writes:

If the White House merely wanted to support a 100 percent audit, it could do so privately, even to both sides (the NYT reported today that President Maduro reached out to the Obama administration through Bill Richardson, looking to improve relations). The White House statement today shows once again that it is definitely not interested in improving relations.

Click here to read the entire post at the Americas Blog.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/venezuelas-presidential-elections-2013-live-blog

[Judi Lynn]

9. Very good news. The U.S. needs to butt right out of this. Thank you. n/t

[Catherina]

11. Precisely what Lula just said.

Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva criticized on Monday (15) the U.S. support to the recount of votes in the presidential election of Venezuela.


Lula critica EUA por apoio à recontagem de votos na Venezuela
'Vira e mexe os americanos cismam em contestar uma eleição', disse.
Em seminário do PT, ex-presidente pediu salva de palmas para Maduro.

...

http://g1.globo.com/mundo/hugo-chavez/noticia/2013/04/lula-critica-eua-por-apoio-recontagem-de-votos-na-venezuela.html

The whole article boils down to "Butt the F Out". Unfortunately the US is too drunk off petrol fumes to respect that.

[Judi Lynn]

12. So good! Lula is a friend of the people of Venezuela, as he has proven. n/t

[Catherina]

7. Argentina says voting was cristal clear

...

On behalf of the entire Argentine population, the ministry released an oficial communiqué which states that “The people of Argentina and its government congratulate President Nicolás Maduro for his electoral victory.”

...

Likewise, the Ministry led by Héctor Timerman gave its standing on the voting process as Venezuelan opposition is already denouncing numerous irregularities.

"The Argentine delegation sent along with UNASUR watchdogs, ratify the transparency of the electoral process as it had also been the case of the previous 18 elections celebrated in Venezuela since Chávez’s first win 14 years ago.”

To end, the communiqué aligns, once more, all Argentines behind the post Chavista populism spectrum and expresses that "As President Cristina Fernández said, all Argentines will join and support President Nicolás Maduro in the continuation of the work started by the Venezuelan people.”

...

http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/128773/argentina-salutes-maduro-says-voting-was-cristal-clear

[Judi Lynn]

10. It will stay crystal clear, too, if the opposition hasn't screwed with things already. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

15. The White House should demand 100% audits HERE!

NO elected official in the U.S.--from Obama on down to dog-catcher in Podunk County--can prove that he or she was actually elected. NOT ONE!

During the 2002 to 2004 period, e-voing with NO AUDITS was spread like a plague throughout the U.S. And now we have a system that is not only run on 'TRADE SECRET' code, largely (75%) owned and controlled by ONE. PRIVATE. FAR RIGHTWING-CONNECTED. CORPORATION--ES&S, which bought out Diebold--but also half the states in the U.S. do NO AUDIT AT ALL and the other half do only a miserably inadequate 1% audit.

"It's all rigged" is a non sequitur, here. It was set up TO BE RIGGED. There is no other conclusion possible.

Venezuela, on the other hand, has "the best election system in the world," according to Jimmy Carter and he's spent his life, post-president, setting election systems up and monitoring them in hundreds of countries. He and all of the reputable election monitoring groups know all the details. They know the code is PUBLICLY owned "Open Source" code, available for review. They know how much of an audit is needed in an electronic system. Venezuela's audit is more than five times the size needed to detect fraud. You don't need a 100% audit. You can detect fraud with a 10% audit! Venezuela's doing way more than that.

So, demanding a 100% audit is more than likely a means of delay so that destabilization efforts can get going and kill more people and bring the Chavez-Maduro government down. And it's probably no accident that the U.S. government and Capriles are saying the same thing--after a quick consultation phone call with the CIA. It reminds me of the bullshit LIES about Mel Zelaya/Honduras that were orchestrated in Washington DC. It is classic "neo-liberal" era destabilization. Create a handy set of lies for the complicit Corporate Media to trumpet--"constitutional crisis," "100% audit," whatever--and drive that knife into the heart of the democracy that you want to overthrow.

So sick! And DOUBLY sick because OUR system is so-o-o-o-o-o riggable!

Prove it, President Obama! Prove that you were really elected. I think you were, actually--and by a bigger margin than we know--but you CANNOT prove it. WHY? Why do we have an unverifiable, corporate-run, 'TRADE SECRET' code election system run by the rightwing jerkwads at ES&S?

Why do HALF THE STATES IN THE U.S. DO NO AUDIT AT ALL?

WHY?

AND, what have they demanded that you agree to, to NOT be Diebolded? Hm?

Or maybe we should ask Chuck Hagel. (--the first beneficiary of his own company's vote rigging--ES&S!)

Gawd.