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Catherina

(35,568 posts)
Tue Apr 30, 2013, 07:35 PM Apr 2013

Honor Venezuela's Election; Maduro Won Fair and Square

Honor Venezuela's Election; Maduro Won Fair and Square

By Daniel Kovalik - Post Gazette, April 30th 2013

I just returned from Venezuela where I was one of 170 international election observers from around the world, including India, Brazil, Great Britain, Argentina, South Korea and France. Among the observers were two former presidents (of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic), judges, lawyers and high-ranking officials of national electoral councils.

What we found was a transparent, reliable, well-run and thoroughly audited electoral system. Two unique and endearing features of the Venezuelan process is that both campaigning and alcohol sales are forbidden in the final two days before an election.

What has been barely mentioned by the U.S. mainstream press is that over 54 percent of the voting machines in the April 14 election have been audited to ensure that the electronic votes match the back-up paper receipts. This was done in the presence of witnesses from both the governing and opposition parties right in the local polling places. I witnessed such an audit, and the Venezuelan electoral commission has since agreed to audit 100 percent of the ballots.

...

The United States could halt this violence quickly by recognizing the results of the April 14 elections. The reason it does not do so is obvious -- it does not like the government chosen by the Venezuelan people and would be glad to see it collapse in the face of violence.

We should all understand that the United States is undermining, not supporting, democracy and stability in Venezuela.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/8940

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Honor Venezuela's Election; Maduro Won Fair and Square (Original Post) Catherina Apr 2013 OP
We should demand that our elections are as transparent. Vincardog Apr 2013 #1
So glad to see the comments from this focused US election observer. Judi Lynn Apr 2013 #2
Venezuela's Election System Holds Up As A Model For The World Judi Lynn May 2013 #3

Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
2. So glad to see the comments from this focused US election observer.
Tue Apr 30, 2013, 09:42 PM
Apr 2013

The administration has to contort itself wildly to keep from running into the unavoidable facts, and having to back down.

From the article:

What were the results? With an impressive 79 percent of registered voters going to the polls, Nicolas Maduro, heir to Hugo Chavez, won by more than 260,000 votes -- 1.8 percent -- over opposition leader Henrique Capriles.

While this was certainly a close race, 260,000 votes is a comfortable margin. Recall that John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960 by only 0.1 percent. George W. Bush became president in 2000 after losing the popular vote to Al Gore but winning by only a few hundred votes in Florida -- where a recount was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In none of these U.S. elections did any other nation insist upon a recount or hesitate in recognizing the declared winner. Had a country like Venezuela done so, we would have found such a position absurd.

The United States' refusal to recognize the April 14 Venezuelan election is no less absurd, especially given the electoral commission's agreement to audit all of the votes. Ironically, President Barack Obama won re-election last year by a mere 0.7 percent of votes cast.

The U.S. position is all the more ridiculous considering that it helped engineer and quickly recognized a coup government in Paraguay last year and approved the results of a 2009 election in Honduras even though the previous president, ousted by the military, was not allowed to compete. Of course, this pales in comparison to U.S. involvement in violent coups against democratically elected leaders in Latin America, such as those against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 and Bertrand Aristide in Haiti in 2004.

I had to bookmark this information as soon as I read it. Thank you.

Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
3. Venezuela's Election System Holds Up As A Model For The World
Tue May 14, 2013, 11:07 PM
May 2013

5/14/2013 @ 12:01PM |1,061 views
Venezuela's Election System Holds Up As A Model For The World

This article is by Eugenio Martinez, who covers elections for Venezuela’s newspaper El Universal and is the host of the weekly TV show El Termómetro.

~snip~
Venezuela employs one of the most technologically advanced verifiable voting systems in the world, designed to protect voters from fraud and tampering and ensure the accuracy of the vote count. Accuracy and integrity are guaranteed from the minute voters walk into the polls to the point where a final tally is revealed.

The system Venezuela uses has some of the most advanced and voter-friendly security features in modern elections. Voters use a touch-sensitive electronic pad to make and confirm their choices. After confirmation, the electronic vote is encrypted and randomly stored in the machine’s memories. Voters audit their own vote by reviewing a printed receipt that they then place into a physical ballot box.

At the end of Election Day, each voting machine computes and prints an official tally, called a precinct count. It transmits an electronic copy of the precinct count to the servers in the National Electoral Council’s central facility, where overall totals are computed.

By mutual agreement between the contenders, 52.98% of the ballot boxes are chosen at random, opened, and their tallies compared with the corresponding precinct counts. This audit step ensures that no vote manipulation has occurred at the polling place. The extent of this audit, the widest in automatic elections, leaves little room for questioning.

More:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2013/05/14/venezuelas-election-system-holds-up-as-a-model-for-the-world/

The source of this article is El Universo, a virulently anti-Chavez paper in Caracas.

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