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highly praised by all international monitoring groups, and transparent, open and aboveboard on its face: Venezuela uses electronic voting, but it is an OPEN SOURCE CODE system--anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated--and they handcount a whopping 55% of the votes as a check on machine fraud.
In the U.S., we now use 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by private, rightwing corporations, with virtually NO audit/recount controls. Half the systems in the country have a ZERO audit (no paper trail at all); the other half may have a ballot but only 1% of them get counted in an audit (not nearly enough in a 'TRADE SECRET' system). The contrast couldn't be more stark. Venezuela has a far, FAR more transparent voting system than we do.
Venezuela also has a completely independent election commission, overseeing all aspects of elections, and permits hundreds of international monitors, from the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups, the NAACP and others from the U.S., to crawl all over Venezuela long before, during and after elections. All of these groups have had high praise for Venezuela's election system, and I've read that election monitors visit Venezuela with great enthusiasm, to learn and to see how it's done.
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