CNE assures that 95% of polling stations are already set up

The president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, offered the opening statement of the process in which Venezuelans elect the next president of the country. According to the official, 100% of the electoral technicians are in the centers, while 95% of the tables are already constituted.

He explained that there are 15,797 active voting centres in the country at this time, with 30,026 polling stations already active for the 21,392,464 registered voters to cast their vote.

In his first official statement of the day, Amoroso called presidential candidates Edmundo González Urrutia, of the Democratic Unitary Platform, and Enrique Márquez, of Centrados, “enemies of Venezuela” for not signing a prior agreement to recognize the results proposed by the CNE.

Amoroso used the statements to report an alleged attempt to sabotage the elections in recent days, however, he asserted that it had not been reported by the authorities in order to avoid concern among the population.

“Know that before this electoral party, the enemies who tried to prevent the elections did everything possible so that you could not exercise your right to vote today (…) We did not want to cause you anguish these days, but you should know that the planes that brought our machines were confiscated and sent to another country (…) they prohibited those planes from flying over a certain country. They did not want you to participate in the elections today with the best electoral system in the world. Today I say with pride, we defeated it.“, said.

The elections have 1,300 national and international observers, to which the president of the CNE then referred to the international politicians who were prevented from entering the country by the Maduro regime, because they were invited by the opposition to observe the process.

Venezuelan polling stations began to open their doors at 6 a.m. local time on Sunday and began receiving voters participating in the presidential election, a day for which more than 21 million people are called to the polls.

As established by the National Electoral Council (CNE), several of the 15,767 centers authorized for this process opened at the scheduled time.

Through social media, Venezuelans reported long queues outside voting centers in several regions of the country’s interior, in some of which voters were reported queuing since Saturday night.

The regulations stipulate that the more than 30,000 voting tables will be open for 12 hours, without interruption, and will remain operational until there are voters in line.

To ensure the security of the process, more than 388,000 members of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) and various State security forces are deployed in the country, which also maintains a temporary “closure” for “the border movement of people, as well as the passage of vehicles” at land accesses with neighboring nations, Colombia and Brazil.