Venezuela to audit remaining electronic votes

[Catherina]

Venezuela to audit remaining electronic votes
National election watchdog says it audit 46 percent of machines that were not checked immediately after Sunday's vote.

19 Apr 2013 03:48


Challenger Henrique Capriles has alleged vote fraud and demanded a for a vote-by-vote recount [AFP]

Venezuela's electoral council has said it will audit the voting machines that were not audited election night in an apparent
rejection of the opposition's demand for a full vote-by-vote recount.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) President Tibisay Lucena said Thursday night that it would audit the 46 percent of the machines that were not audited immediately after Sunday's vote.

Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles has presented a series of allegations of vote fraud and other irregularities to back up his demand for a vote-by-vote recount for the presidential election.

"We do this (expand the audit) in order to preserve a climate of harmony ... and isolate violent sectors that are seeking to injure democracy," Lucena said in a televised speech.

...

"We can show the country the truth ... with this, we're where we want to be," Capriles told reporters after the CNE announcement.

....

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2013/04/201341933023857789.html

[Zorro]

1. Looks like 96 hours is the time it takes

to fix the vote tally on unaudited machines.

[reorg]

2. now that they got what they wanted

I trust they will shoot fireworks into the sky

[joshcryer]

4. They banged pans.

Last edited Fri Apr 19, 2013, 02:46 AM - Edit history (1)

And played salsa music.

[Catherina]

8. Not really lol, They wanted a national spectacle of uselessly opening all the ballot boxes

and handcounting each ballot and they're not going to get that.

The CNE threw them a bone since the Capriles camp finally got around to doing what they should have done in the first place which was to make a formal request for the courts to consider as opposed to throwing a public temper tantrum and sending people out on the streets to destabilize the country.

Pots and pans, attacking buildings, getting people killed by your supporters, the ridiculous twitter campaign that they needed international intervention because they're being repressed, running to the OAS in lieu of submitting a formal request was total bullshit and everyone knows it. They finally decided to make a formal request, as they had several times been told to do, late Wednesday afternoon when their other tactics were just discrediting them.


AP had a shorter article but at least they included the difference

Venezuela's Electoral Body Says It Will Audit Remaining Vote, Not Do Full Vote-by-Vote Recount

CARACAS, Venezuela April 19, 2013 (AP)
Venezuela's electoral body says it will audit remaining vote, not do full vote-by-vote recount.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/venezuelas-electoral-body-audit-remaining-vote-full-vote-18994423#.UXFD0Ji6VI4

I think this is all to allow him a little space to save a little bit of what remains of his face.

The council's president, Tibisay Lucena, told AFP news agency that the expanded audit was not a recount but would cover all ballot boxes not audited on election day by reviewing a sample two-thirds of them over the next month.

Venezuela uses electronic voting machines which register an elector's decision and then emit a printed receipt for the voter to deposit into a sealed ballot box. For the audit, the receipts will be compared with the electronic tallies, to check for any irregularities.

...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22215387

We do this (expand the audit) in order to preserve a climate of harmony ... and isolate violent sectors that are seeking to injure democracy," Tibisay Lucena, the CNE president, said in a televised speech.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/19/us-venezuela-election-audit-idUSBRE93I05B20130419

[joshcryer]

24. The audit involves looking at the paper ballots.

While there is this incoherent meme that looking at paper ballots, addnig them up, and comparing them to actas and digital results doesn't equate "counting," it is 100% a recount of the ballots. They were counted on election night and they will be counted again.

The protesters and Capriles got what they wanted.

Now if Tibi wants she can try to do some maneuvering, but in the end, it will be a recount because any shenanigans will be responded with quickly by Venezuela's new revolutionaries who will simply take to the streets once more.

[joshcryer]

3. The protests worked!

[joshcryer]

5. Kick!

Several misleading posts about this above this attempting to show that the votes won't be counted.

[naaman fletcher]

6. So, is this narrative right:

It's a close vote, so Capriles calls for 100% recount. Maduro and CNE head immediately agree, although later back down (or at least Maduro does.).

There are a few days of violence that Maduro blames on Capriles.

Now Maduro agress to do what Capriles asked for and he agreed to in the first place.

What am I missing?

[joshcryer]

7. That's about right.

Capriles claimed to have won, of course, which you and I both know is unlikely, but other than that, yep.

The votes will apparently be counted.

Oh, and we should note that Maduro wanted to count the votes initially but backed down and then the CNE said they'd count them, so there's that. It probably wouldn't have happened without Capriles crazily demanding a recount even though he lost.

[Bacchus4.0]

10. good news n/t

s

[Marksman_91]

11. Let's not forget that the Supreme Court pretty much flipped them the bird too

[ocpagu]

13. Nope.

Maduro didn't back down. CNE didn't agree with a recount. And I think it was the right decision, since not a single evidence of fraud was presented by the gang leader and his thugs.

[naaman fletcher]

14. But

Now they are doing the recount

[ocpagu]

16. Yes.

But it was a decision of CNE. Maduro didn't change his position at any point.

[Bacchus4.0]

17. ummmm, it wasn't Maduro's decision. Obstensibly, the CNE is independent

of the ruling party.

[joshcryer]

21. Yes he did.

He never instructed the CNE what he wanted them to do. He just "went silent" on wanting the 100% recount and when the US said that a recount would be good he rebuffed the US and said "Mind your own business." He could have simply said "I support a recount" and all the protests would've never happened.

I don't quite understand what's up with the revisionism.

[Bacchus4.0]

15. they are doing a 100% audit of the voting machines n/t

n/t

[killbotfactory]

9. I'm sure Capriles and his supporters will accept the results of the audit.

[Catherina]

12. They're already trying to spin this into a "win" lol

It's too funny watching.

They threw a huge temper tantrum demanding a vote-by-vote recount of the physical ballots. So ignorant are they that they didn't even realize there's no such thing but they kept demanding the impossible out in the streets with their pots and pans, while their other comrades, away from the cameras were attacking buildings and trying to terrorize people.

After seeing their tantrum would not be allowed to destabilize the country, they finally, finally did exactly what they'd been criticized for refusing to do from the first - "make a formal complaint using the the proper legal channels".

So late Wednesday afternoon, they finally, after all that bullshit and violence, finally put in a formal request, AFTER the courts publicly chided them for not having done so. And at the same time they put something in to try to stop the inauguration. Of course that got denied but the courts threw them a bone and said they'd do an audit of the remaining 46 votes but NOT the bullshit vote-by-vote hand recount Capriles thought he'd get to play the GWBush game with.

I swear it has to be James Baker advising him too lol.

I wrote all that out because I see ignored people responding in this thread and I'm sure they've come up with some sort of perfume to throw on this turd and pretend it's a rose.

Capriles and his supporters will never accept it anymore than they can accept that the wretched poor have the same equal God-given rights that they do.

[joshcryer]

22. There is a paper ballot for every vote.

The false meme that there's "no such thing" of a "vote-by-vote recount of the physical ballots" comes right out of chavista propaganda. There are physical ballots for every vote.

They also never refused to "make a formal complaint using the the proper legal channels," that takes time, the protests were clearly instrumental toward getting the recount since the CNE, the TSJ, and Maduro himself was against a recount and even you quoted Mark Weisbrot saying a recount was less likely due to the US calling for it.

So, not only did the chavistas concede to the protesters, they conceded to the US.

[Zorro]

18. They've had four days now to fiddle with the machines

How valid will the recount be?

Highly suspicious.

[Catherina]

19. Venezuela’s Electoral Council Approves Audit of 100 Percent of Votes

Venezuela’s Electoral Council Approves Audit of 100 Percent of Votes
By Chris Carlson


Maracaibo, April 18th, 2013 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced Thursday that it would carry out an audit of 100 percent of the votes in last Sunday’s presidential elections.

CNE President Tibisay Lucena made the announcement in a nationwide broadcast this evening, after the Capriles campaign formally submitted a request for a full recount on Wednesday.

A random audit of 54 percent of the votes is routinely conducted immediately after the polls close on election day, and was done without any discrepancies on Sunday evening.

However, opposition leaders have refused to recognize the official results, and demanded a full recount of 100 percent of the votes.

Protests erupted around the country demanding a recount after Capriles refused to recognize the outcome, and resulted in various deaths and dozens wounded. Yet the Capriles campaign did not formally request a recount as stipulated by law until yesterday evening.

The CNE’s decision will not be a full recount of the votes as the opposition has demanded, but rather an audit of the remaining 46 percent of the votes that were not audited on the night of the elections.

“We will select a sample that will be audited for 10 days and a report of the results will be emitted. This procedure will be repeated every 10 days for 30 days in the presence of witnesses from both camps,” said Lucena.

Lucena said that 400 ballot boxes would be audited per day, and that the start date of the audit process will be announced next week.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles immediately responded by accepting the CNE decision, and claimed that the full audit would reveal the elections were fraudulent.

“Sooner or later the truth will come out, and not only will it come out but it will have real consequences,” he said.

Capriles claimed that according to their analysis the problems with the vote count are in the 46 percent of the ballot boxes that were not audited on Sunday night.

“Our calculations show that it is about 12,000 ballot boxes. We know where the problems are. They are in those 12,000 boxes,” he said.

However, given that the initial audit on election night of 54 percent of the ballot boxes is a random hot audit of half the ballot boxes in each voting center, it is extremely unlikely that any fraud attempts would not have been detected by the initial audit.

In addition, the examples of irregularities in the vote count given by Capriles so far have all been shown to be false.

There also seemed to be some confusion about the extent of the audit. Capriles insisted that it would be a complete review of voter rolls, vote tallies, and paper receipts. However, the CNE audit is strictly a comparison of paper receipts to vote tallies to make sure they match.

Capriles called on his supporters to continue protesting against the government, and called for activities to protest President Nicolas Maduro’s swearing-in ceremony on Friday.

Referring to the wave of violence in recent days, including attacks on government health clinics and PSUV political party offices, Capriles accused the government of committing the attacks themselves, and did not acknowledge the violent deaths of several government supporters in recent days.

Published on Apr 18th 2013 at 11.52pm

This work is licensed under a Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Creative Commons license

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8683

[Zorro]

20. What a positive story from the Venezuelan government's propaganda website

It's quite reassuring.

[joshcryer]

23. +1