Capriles still defiant on eve of Venezuela vote recount

[Catherina]

Capriles still defiant on eve of Venezuela vote recount

by Agence France-Presse
Posted on 04/29/2013 7:43 AM | Updated 04/29/2013 7:44 AM

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles vowed Sunday, April 28, to "take to the world" his challenge of this month's presidential vote, as election officials readied a partial ballot recount.

Capriles, who says he should have been declared the winner of the April 14 presidential vote, alleged via his Twitter account that election authorities rejected his appeal for a full recount "at the order of the Socialist Party" that governs Venezuela.

...

Venezuela's National Electoral Board has said that a full vote recount is legally impossible, but Capriles rejects anything less as insufficient, and vowed in a tweet that "sooner or later, there will be new elections."

A group of opposition lawmakers who back Capriles's challenge said they too would continue to draw attention to the case, including launching appeals at regional bodies like Mercosur and Unasur.

"We will go to all the (global) organizations, so that the whole world knows that Henrique Capriles Radonski won the elections in Venezuela," said opposition lawmaker Ismael Garcia.

...

http://www.rappler.com/world/27753-venezuela-capriles-vote-recount

Phone calls between members of the opposition show they are conscious that they lost the election. In the video below, Dr. Luis Ugueto Arizmendi, an engineer, economist and former Minister of the Finance, "one of the closest advisers to Henrique Capriles, who takes part in meetings that happens every Monday in a place they call "La Peña", recognizes that Capriles lost election.

Translation of conversations here: http://www.rappler.com/world/27753-venezuela-capriles-vote-recount

[Demeter]

1. Yes, well, he should have been born under a Bush, then

[Tempest]

2. Meanwhile the rest of the world (US excluded) recognizes Maduro as legitimately elected. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

3. If he dispatches his zombie storm troopers to lay waste to more medical units,

to kill more progressive people, to burn up homes of the poor, to slaughter and maim more helpless poor people, eventually he's going to be able to win a new election, once more Chavez/Maduro supporters have been stolen from life, and from their loved ones.

A majority of real trash voting could win. A majority of human beings will vote against the posturing parasites of the oligarchy who live off the actual labor and lives of the poor.

[bahrbearian]

4. Venezuela vote recount

has John Kerry eaten crow lately?

[Tempest]

5. An imperialist foreign policy means never having to say you're sorry

Or agreeing with international observers, it appears.

[sabrina 1]

6. Well, he's certainly blowing the carefully crafted image he tried to create isn't he? No surprise

to see him as he really is though to most intelligent people always did. I'm happy to see him reveal his true colors this way. Anyone with doubts as to who he really was, cannot be in doubt anymore. Sounds like he's still trying to show his Western handlers he's willing to go any extreme to please them. But even they know they lost as the world recognizes the duly elected president.

He sounds and acts like a sociopath. Thank the gods he did not make it for the sake of the people of Venezuela, despite all the outside help he got trying to deceive the people.

[ocpagu]

7. Well...

... he's already announcing he won't recognize the results of the recount. Of course. Not part of his script. He wants to throw the country in civil war and to be put in the Miraflores by force.

A typical right-winger. Nothing less.

[joshcryer]

8. He agreed to an audit.

This is no more an audit than running the vote tally through a Diebold machine.

[Peace Patriot]

9. That is a complete LIE!

Venezuela does NOT have a privatized system, with half the states in the U.S. UNABLE TO DO ANY AUDIT AT ALL, let alone a recount, and the other half doing only a miserably inadequate 1% audit, and all of it run on 'TRADE SECRET' code--code that the public is forbidden to review! Code that is largely (75%) OWNED AND CONTROLLED by ONE, PRIVATE, FAR RIGHTWING-CONNECTED corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold.

Venezuela uses OPEN SOURCE code--code that belongs TO THE PUBLIC and that anyone may review--and they do a whopping 53% to 55% audit right on election day----over five times the minimum audit needed to detect fraud in an electronic system--using a VERIFIED-BY-THE VOTER ballot for EVERY VOTE!

Jeez! This is Bushwhackism, this statement of yours. Turning the truth ON ITS HEAD.

WE are the one with the extremely riggable, privatized system. Venezuela is the one with the transparent, public system, with every possible safeguard against rigging, and which Jimmy Carter recently called "the best election system in the world"!

You are stating the REVERSE OF THE TRUTH. Take it back! I don't care how bitter you are that Capriles lost--take it back! Your credibility is on the line, joshcryer.

[joshcryer]

10. Saying it is open source is a lie! Show me the source code.

You keep repeating that lie. Please show me the source code. You can't because it is an outright lie that Smartmatic voting machines are open source.

Speaking of Smartmatic, they are a private corporation. They owned Sequoia.

They are no more transparent than Diebold and in fact their machine source code has not been inspected since 2005.

[naaman fletcher]

11. Thanks for pointing this out, I've been meaning to get to it.

Smartmatic's one foray into US elections was a total fiasco in Chicago.

It turns out, they are about to destroy the elections in the philippines as well:

http://thevotingnews.com/dont-use-smartmatic-precinct-count-optical-scan-machines-in-2013-polls-comelec-urged-inquirer/

[joshcryer]

16. Smartmatic is a mulitmillion dollar corporation.

They can't afford for their intellectual property to be open source.

Any audits that have been done have been done under very controlled circumstances.

If they would simply release the source code with the has verification and the toolchain that the code was compiled with, before the election, with a hash of all the data (including the toolchain compilers; they can also be manipulated), then I'd buy it.

As it stands now they are no more open than fucking Diebold.

[reorg]

12. There was never much credibility to be restored

with this particular poster in the first place.

As I pointed out to him even before the election, there are regular source code reviews. The European Union Electoral Observation Mission stated in 2005 that:

These activities, initially only planned as static presentations of the code structure, later on evolved, upon request of some observers, into debugging sessions, i.e. dynamic analysis of the running programs where specific operations, for example the casting of a vote, could be followed step by step as processed by the computers involved.

Smartmatic and CNE main developers were present during the audit and actually presenting the system. During the entire audit sessions, they did not appear to try to hide anything. Even when the analysis on the reconstruction of the voting sequence became deeper and deeper, CNE and Smartmatic and CNE staff remained open and very confident.

28th October 2005
Source code assessment and development of electronic signature (EU observers not in attendance)

19th November 2005 Source code review/de-bugging session (EU observer in attendance)

21st November 2005 & 22nd November 2005
Presentation and review of central results tabulation system and source code (EU observers in attendance):
High level explanation/presentation (Powerpoint) giving general overview of structure and workflows of the audit system.

23rd November 2005
Source code review/debugging session of source code of voting machine (EU observers in attendance): This meeting took the form of a line by line review of the source code by Smartmatic and specifically a review of the process of randomising and storing the Vote Files.

p 27 and Annex II (excerpt) of European Union Electoral Observation Mission FINAL REPORT

However, this is not even an issue since there is a paper trail and the results were audited, which takes place in a very reliable way, as you have noted. Thus the opposition, after vehementy requesting a "full" audit of 100% of ballot boxes instead of 54% now ignore it altogether because they know for a fact that the results were always correct.

[naaman fletcher]

13. The assertion made by Josh Cryer

and others on the web is that nobody has seen the source code since 2005. If that is the case (and I don't know) it would tend to discount the claim that venezeula's elections are "open source".

[reorg]

14. This poster makes "assertions" every day

that are easily disproven, often contradict each other and are mostly beside the point, anyway.

The procedure described in my previous post is standard in Venezuelan elections and the opposition never claimed that they don't have access or that there was anything wrong with the source code.

The very fact that they now ignore the recount which they so adamantly demanded indicates that they don't expect it to show any malfunctions or manipulations.

Security of the voting machines: Political party and domestic observer technical
experts have participated in the 16 pre-election audits of the entire automated system,
including hardware and software as well as the fingerprint databases, in the most open
process to date, according to opposition technical experts. The MUD experts who have
participated in the audits have said they are confident in the security mechanisms and the
secrecy of the vote. One of the key aspects of the security control mechanisms involves
the construction of an encryption key – a string of characters – created by contributions
from the opposition, government, and CNE, which is placed on all the machines once the
software source-code has been reviewed by all the party experts. The software on the
machines cannot then be tampered with unless all three parties join together to “open” the
machines and change the software. In addition, each voting machine has its own
individual digital signature that detects if there is any modification to that machine. If the
vote count is somehow tampered with despite these security mechanisms, it should be
detectable, according to all the experts who have participated in the process, because of
the various manual verification mechanisms.

Carter Center Study Mission Pre-Election Report for the Oct. 7, 2012

[joshcryer]

15. That is simply not an independent audit.

The last actual audit of the machines was in 2005. In fact, during that audit a programmer shocked the Smartmatic corporate pigs by simply writing a program that revealed the votes of those who voted on the machines. He started by saying Voter X voted for Person Y. He didn't even make it to the fifth person before Smartmatic shut him down after proving just how iffy voting machines can be.

In any event software code review takes weeks if not months (which is why open source is good). The last time you spouted this nonsense you acted as if they did this "review" in the days preceding the elections which was preposterous.

If the code was subject to an independent audit as you claim then why is the Philippines suing for that very thing? Because Smartmatic, being a private corporation, must assure that no one see its intellectual property.

Regardless, Capriles' problem in the OP is that the CNE does not allow the opposition access to the voter rolls, which the Supreme Court said in the 2012 primaries were necessary to assure that no fraud was happening.

BTW, keep insulting me, it doesn't even stick because I know I am correct on this issue. The code is not open source.

[reorg]

17. "Capriles' problem in the OP"

has indeed nothing to do with the source code of the software used in the election and the tabulation of the votes.

Although he loudly demanded in front of TV cameras that all ballot boxes need to be opened and although he stated numerous times that every single ballot must be counted and checked against the electronic count (while making hand gestures indicating the process of hand-counting), he now completely dismisses this process, once his "recount" was granted by the CNE.

Instead, he now insists that all 15 million fingerprints and signatures need to be rechecked and re-verified. (Oh, and BTW, why are you not protesting this? What happened to your conspiracy theory about the secret archives with fingerprints and allocated votes?)

Next he will demand interviews with each invidivual voter to verify if they actually checked their receipts and really put them into the box themselves.


Regarding the problem that had been detected during previous audits of the election software, it only goes to show that audits took place and delivered results. It had nothing to do with the tabulation of the votes, as you very well know. Here is the comment about it from the EU observers in 2005:

The EU EOM was present at the audit session of 23 November and had the possibility to observe the events in its entirety. The possibility of endangerment of the secrecy of the vote was evaluated by EU EOM experts as remote. The breach of the secrecy of the vote could only be possible if the sequence of both the identification of the voters and the votes cast was reconstructed. This reconstruction would require access to three different dispersed sources of information by a qualified user. These sources are the VM memory, the SAVs memory and the entire encryption key code (divided among the political parties and the CNE) used in the system to protect the voting data. In addition to that, the EU EOM is of the opinion that this possibility was truly due to a mistake from the CNE and Smartmatic and not to a fraudulent attempt to reconstruct the voting sequence. (page 27)

Footnote: Smartmatic and CNE main developers were present during the audit and actually presenting the system. During the entire audit sessions, they did not appear to try to hide anything. Even when the analysis on the reconstruction of the voting sequence became deeper and deeper, CNE and Smartmatic and CNE staff remained open and very confident. When the bug was revealed they were obviously taken by surprise. They had no strategy to justify it and made no attempts to play down the issue.

http://eeas.europa.eu/eueom/pdf/missions/finalreportenversion.pdf

[Peace Patriot]

18. Code "divided among the political parties and the CNE"!

"This reconstruction would require access to three different dispersed sources of information by a qualified user. These sources are the VM memory, the SAVs memory and the entire encryption key code (divided among the political parties and the CNE) used in the system to protect the voting data." --the EU Election Observers, quoted above

---------------------

The rightwing opposition possesses part of the code! Other political parties possess other parts of the code, along with the CNE (which is composed of all major parties).

SO, this is NOT private code! This is something that Smartmatic DEVELOPED for the Venezuelan PUBLIC and turned over to them. It is owned by the public. It is divided among the political parties for review and to prevent any one party or group from controlling it. The political parties represent THE PUBLIC.

Smartmatic DOES NOT CONTROL THE CODE.

The opposite is true in the U.S. Here, the public is FORBIDDEN TO REVIEW the code by which our votes are allegedly counted. ES&S/Diebold OWNS AND CONTROLS the code in 75% of the machines in the U.S. and other private companies own and control the rest. NO ONE--not Barrack Obama, not Howard Dean, not Mitt Romney, not Jeb Bush, nor any party official or nor any member of the public, is permitted to view this code (although they might make an exception for Chuck Hagel*).

Developing and selling code to a PUBLIC body--code that is then owned by the public, and reviewable by the public--is the opposite of forcing the public to use 'TRADE SECRET' code--code that the public is forbidden to review!

I followed the case in Florida a couple of years ago, wherein a Democrat lost a close Congressional election and sued the election officials, with a demand to SEE the ES&S code by which the votes had been tabulated. ES&S argued that protecting their PRIVATE property rights and right to PROFIT from our elections trumps the right of the public to know how their votes were tabulated! The Bushbot judge agreed and that was that. The whole matter got deep-sixed in Congress (the ultimate arbiter of elections).

This COULD NOT HAPPEN in Venezuela. The code belongs to the public. It is OPEN SOURCE. Of course it is not "open source" in the sense that anybody can mess with it. That would be absurd. It is "open source" in the sense that it is transparent, reviewable, public, NOT BELONGING TO A PRIVATE PARTY.

Jeez, it's just amazing how rightwingers mess with everybody's heads--calling black white and white black. Calling something that is as plain as the nose on your face hidden and furtive. Pushing an obvious destabilization plot as a cry for election transparency!

There is no more transparent election system on earth than Venezuela's. Jimmy Carter himself said that it is "the best in the world"!

Can you just imagine EU, OAS, Unasur and other election groups and hundreds of FOREIGN election observers crawling all over OUR elections, as they do in Venezuela BY INVITATION OF THE GOVERNMENT!?

What a laugh! Venezuela's elections are honest and ours are not. That is the plain fact of the matter.



--------

*(ES&S was his company when he first ran for U.S. Senate. Naturally, he won--and has since climbed up the imperial ladder to the pinnacle of power.)

[naaman fletcher]

19. I'm not sure that is right

You state: "The rightwing opposition possesses part of the code! Other political parties possess other parts of the code, along with the CNE (which is composed of all major parties).

SO, this is NOT private code! This is something that Smartmatic DEVELOPED for the Venezuelan PUBLIC and turned over to them. It is owned by the public. It is divided among the political parties for review and to prevent any one party or group from controlling it. The political parties represent THE PUBLIC. "

The opposition claims that they have not seen the code since 2005. I don't know if that is true or not, but let's at least know what the debate is here.

[reorg]

20. "The CNE, however, owns the source code of all Smartmatic software they use."

Final Report of the European Union Election Observation Mission, p. 24

The representative of the opposition in the CNE is Rector Vicente Jose Gregorio Diaz Silva.

So much for certain ludicrous claims of anonymous posters.

[naaman fletcher]

21. huh?

The opposition says:

"We haven't seen the source code since 2005".

How does a report about 2005 counter that?

[reorg]

22. I know you don't get it

The report by neutral EU observers explicitly states that the source code is OWNED by the CNE, the Venezuelan organisation that is responsible for elections. It is NOT owned by the firm that developed the code, as certain anonymous posters here claim. It was acquired and is owned and further developed by the CNE, as the EU observers already stated in 2005. Are you claiming the CNE sold their right of ownership since, to somebody else? Got a source for that ludicrous claim?

"The opposition" does not say what you claim they say. I have been following the news in Venezuela pretty closely in the last few weeks and they don't object to the voting system or the source code. "The opposition" has a representative at the CNE, he frequently makes statements supporting the wishes and views of Mr. Capriles. This representative also writes for the right-wing propaganda press (El Universal). He is one of the "rectores" of the CNE, the organisation that OWNS the source code. If there were any issues with the source code, he would be the first to make it publicy known and who would have the means and opportunity to prove it or at least demand an investigation, which he doesn't.

But keep playing dumb in order to keep us informed about all matters concerned.

[naaman fletcher]

23. It's not open source

"Open-source software (OSS) is computer software with its source code made available and licensed with an open-source license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change and distribute the software for free to anyone and for any purpose".

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

[reorg]

26. it is open to examination by opposition representatives and technicians

which is all that is necessary and required.

I never said the CNE posted the source code on the web.

You, however, try to make a big deal out of ominous claims by some anonymous poster here. Claims that even the opposition right-wingers in Venezuela do not make.

[naaman fletcher]

28. I didn't say that you said that.

Although I do question whether it is open to examination by opposition reps.

[reorg]

30. you know

I don't really care what you question. Im getting bored by your oh so innocent little questions.

Come up with a direct quote from an opposition spokesperson or shut up already.

[naaman fletcher]

33. You were wrong and put words in my mouth

Be decent and say "sorry" rather than do the 10 year old "I don't care what you think".

[reorg]

34. you said

"opposition claims that they have not seen the code since 2005"

Where does the opposition make that claim?

[naaman fletcher]

35. You are changing the subject

That is not what we were arguing about at all when you put words into my mouth.

As for the above claim, I will look for it, it will take some time.

[reorg]

37. ridiculous

you stated in posts #13, 19, 21

(the opposition claims that) "nobody has seen the source code since 2005",

it started in post #10 by another poster and that's from where you took over.

[naaman fletcher]

38. You are right,

It was this thread wear you put words in my mouth:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1108&pid=15422

sorry

[joshcryer]

27. Where is the source code?

If it's open source you will have no problem providing a link to it.

I agree that the opposition isn't talking about the source code or the machines.

It was PP who made the false claim that the source code was open.

It is not.

The entire thing was a deflection from the OP in which Capriles' desire to have an audit was completely shut down and denied by the CNE who made up Katherine Harris style conditions upon which the "audit" was to be done.

[reorg]

31. "I agree that the opposition isn't talking about the source code"

oh, really. Tell that to your little friend over there, the one with the innocent little questions.

The source code is open to the opposition. It doesn't matter that it isn't posted on the web.


The fact of the matter is that when Capriles got his wish and the CNE granted him his audit, he, instead of shooting fireworks into the sky, immediately came up with new and ever more ridiculous demands. He wants 15 million fingerprints to be verified (again), LOL!

[joshcryer]

36. Nope, he wants to check to see if the machines work.

If they don't then why would they need to verify 15 million fingerprints?

It'd prove that the validity of the pre-vote checks is in question.

If they do work then it's simply a matter of comparing the fingerprints to the registry, which is all digital and "the best in the world."

It's amusing the lengths you go to to try to persuade people that they can't do the checks that Capriles has requested.

It's even more amusing that they're not going to do them (as I predicted) and yet you still persist in making up nonsense ("check 15 million fingerprints&quot .

[reorg]

40. LOL

Just the first two random search results:

mirar con lupa los cuadernos de votación en los que los electores firman y estampan su huella

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2013/04/130425_venezuela_crisis_capriles_repeticion_elecciones_impugnacion_az.shtml

“Si no tenemos acceso a los cuadernos de votación, a la verificación de la firma, de la huella y a revisar lo que personaliza el voto, no vamos a participar.

http://www.diariolasamericas.com/noticia/155605/capriles-alarga-el-ultimatum-al-cne-e-impugna-las-elecciones

[joshcryer]

25. Please provide a link to the code.

Thanks.

[joshcryer]

24. Wrong, the audit was to include ALL of that.

Capriles' formal request was to audit the entire process, that includes making sure that the fingerprint machines work, which observers from UNASUR found did not. It also includes comparing the voter registry with the rolls and the box count.

After pressure from UNASUR the CNE came out and said, "Well, we'll do an audit."

Then a day or so later they outlined what the "audit" would be, which was decidedly not what Capriles requested.

The opposition has not been allowed to look at the registry or the rolls.

In the end they will not be allowed to do so.

[reorg]

29. you can try and twist it as much as you want

the first slogan - said loud and clear - was: "every vote counts", "why not open the boxes and count all of them again!"

They also made these nebulous claims about "irregularities" but did not bring them to the attention of the CNE, nor did they provide any proof - except what was immediately shown to be false and misleading.

Only when the CNE had approved the 100% audit did they come up with the absurd demand to verify 15 million fingerprints (those in your secret database, remember?) and signatures. Yeah, good luck with these demands, LOL!

I believe the voter registry has been made public several times in the past, not sure why you say the opposition would not be allowed to look at it. As long as the dead didn't step out of their graves and vote (and there were randomly chosen election workers as well as witnesses from all parties to prevent this), it is unfortunate but not necessarily a tragedy if these lists are not regularly updated in a timely fashion.

[joshcryer]

39. Whatever was said before the formal request is irrelevant.

The formal request was a full audit of the system including the electoral rolls and registry. Sorry this is too hard for you to get your head around. Yes I can find a piecemeal quote where Capriles says "open the boxes." I can also find a quote (before the formal request) where he said he demanded a "full audit." Those quotes are irrelevant. The formal request, you know, the one that actually pushes forward an official request, was for a full audit and included the electoral rolls and registry.

These could be provided trivially in the auditing process, but it's clear that they don't care about the veracity of the vote, because they themselves said that the rolls were fundamental toward showing the legitimacy of the vote.

The CNE agreed to a 100% audit "with conditions." The end result of their proposal was decidedly not a 100% audit.

[naaman fletcher]

41. What's amusing,

is that in the days after the election the Chavezistas were dismissing everything Capriles said on the basis that he hadn't made a formal request yet.

[reorg]

42. Or maybe if you want to prove that the dead came up

from their graves and voted you need to go to a court and provide some serious proof instead of insufferable blather and some slides.

[joshcryer]

43. Just release the data.

It's the most uncontroversial thing ever.

I keep saying that if the Chavistas want to marginalize Capriles they should simply do it.

Certainly López Obrador was highly marginalized by Felipe Calderón who acquiesced on the fraud allegations that López Obrador made back in 2006 in Mexico. Indeed, Capriles is following the López Obrador model completely, by calling for protests (which Obrador did and and Capriles is going to do again May 1st). Of course when Obrador did it (twice) he was cheered as a man of the people and for the people. Capriles is called a treasonous fascist (typical with the double speak used so frequently on these forums).

My thinking is simple. They know that the rolls are not tight and they are afraid that their incompetence will be shown so they're not releasing the data. It's likely that the whole fingerprinting thing was a fiasco from the beginning (the Carter Center admonished them for simply using them to scare people about the secrecy of the vote; and it worked because the students certainly protested it).

The real irony is that the system is supposed to be designed so that an audit of this magnitude would be able to very trivially prove each vote was legitimate, and so simply providing the data would, even if there are irregularities, make the system more robust in the future.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

32. No one in the US should be questioning the election results in Venezuela.

We should wish to have as clear a count in this country.
The US should recognize the results as well. Period.