{"id":8941,"date":"2024-10-02T11:59:18","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T15:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=8941"},"modified":"2024-10-03T12:01:17","modified_gmt":"2024-10-03T16:01:17","slug":"independent-election-experts-legitimize-tally-sheets-venezuelas-opposition-says-prove-maduro-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=8941","title":{"rendered":"Independent Election Experts Legitimize Tally Sheets Venezuela\u2019s Opposition Says Prove Maduro Lost"},"content":{"rendered":"
A woman holds up a sign with a message that reads in Spanish: \u201cEveryone with Edmundo\u201d during a protest against the reelection of President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro two month after the disputed presidential vote which opposition leaders say they won by a landslide in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (AP Photo\/Ariana Cubillos)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An independent group of election experts that observed Venezuela\u2019s July presidential election on Wednesday legitimized the vote tally sheets the opposition has offered as proof of President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s defeat, telling the Organization of American States the electronic balloting system worked and the ruling party as well as other stakeholders \u201cknow the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The assertions from an expert with the U.S.-based Carter Center came during a session convened by members of the regional body to address the dispute that emerged from Venezuela\u2019s presidential election<\/a><\/span>. The group was one of the two independent panels that the government invited to observe the vote on July 28, which electoral authorities claimed \u2013 without offering any proof \u2013 favored Maduro.<\/p>\n

The dispute has centered on thousands of tally sheets known as actas<\/a><\/span> \u2014 printouts that resemble shopping receipts \u2014 that have long been considered the ultimate proof of election results in Venezuela. Each of the 30,000 electronic voting machines used in the July 28 election printed several copies of the sheets, which representatives of participating parties have a right to obtain when the information is transmitted to the National Electoral Council.<\/p>\n

Ruling party-loyal electoral authorities declared Maduro the victor hours after polls closed, but they did not publish results broken down by voting machine as they had done in previous presidential elections. They claimed they could not release the detailed information because their website was hacked.<\/p>\n

The main opposition coalition, however, secured tally sheets from more than 80% of voting machines and published them online. The government then claimed those records were false and opened an investigation against members of the opposition, including the coalition\u2019s candidate Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe voting system is electronic, but it offers a paper trail \u2013 proof of what the electronic machine reports \u2013 and that is what was collected by tens of thousands of poll watchers, not just from the opposition, but also from the government party, the PSUV, that also has the same information,\u201d Jennie Lincoln, who led the Carter Center\u2019s mission to Venezuela, told diplomats Wednesday before showing them tally sheets.<\/p>\n

Lincoln stopped short of declaring Gonzalez the election winner<\/a><\/span>, telling diplomats that \u201cobservers do not pronounce elections\u201d as \u201cthat is the responsibility of the electoral authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lincoln said the Carter Center recently received via international mail the tally sheets she showed during the session. She did not say who sent them, and the organization did not immediately respond to a request from The Associated Press seeking more information on the records.<\/p>\n

– Regina Garcia Cano, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/div>\n

The Organization of American States and several governments have urged Venezuela\u2019s electoral authorities to published detailed voting data. Wednesday\u2019s session was convened at the request of Argentina, Costa Rica, Panama, the United States, Guatemala, Guyana, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An independent group of election experts that observed Venezuela\u2019s July presidential election on Wednesday legitimized the vote tally sheets the opposition has offered as proof of President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s defeat, telling the Organization of American States the electronic balloting system worked and the ruling party as well as other stakeholders \u201cknow the truth.\u201d The assertions…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":8943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/d9ae0ee\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/8640x5757+0+1\/resize\/980x653!\/format\/webp\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2Ff9%2F5c%2Fefc0e36f0f51cfda3aff69bd71ec%2F3f647ac847d34565a49bf4e30511eb25","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8941"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8944,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8941\/revisions\/8944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}