UN Panel of Experts Calls Election Failures “Unprecedented”

The United Nations (UN) Panel of Experts presented a report on Tuesday night with some of its preliminary conclusions of the process of observing the presidential elections in Venezuela and mentioned that “The CNE’s results management process did not comply with the basic transparency and integrity measures that are essential for holding credible elections.”, NTN 24 reviewed.

He noted that in the Panel’s experience, “The announcement of the result of an election without the publication of its details or the disclosure of tabulated results to the candidates is unprecedented in contemporary democratic elections.”

The group indicated that the election “It also failed to follow national legal and regulatory provisions, and all established deadlines were missed,” he said. “This had a negative impact on confidence in the result announced by the CNE among a large part of the Venezuelan electorate.”he added.

The Panel noted that the electronic transmission of results «it worked well initially»but it stopped abruptly in the hours after the polling stations closed. “without any information or explanation being provided to the candidates at the time.”

«At the time of announcing the results, the CNE president stated that a terrorist cyberattack had affected the transmission and caused a delay in the tabulation process. However, the CNE postponed and subsequently cancelled three key post-election audits, including one on the communication system.»he mentioned.

Another key finding of the Panel is that the CNE has put in place measures for the production of printed results protocols (minutes) at the voting table level.This was a key transparency safeguard measure (i.e. a paper trail), with several security features such as QR codes and verification codes with unique signatures, as well as physical signatures of officials and agents.

«These security features, taken together, appear to be very difficult to falsify. The legal framework stipulates that each original printed protocol must be sealed and kept by the military. Copies of these were to be distributed to polling station officials, party agents and accredited observers. However, the Panel received several reports that opposition party agents had been prevented from obtaining such a copy.»accurate.

He stated that, despite guaranteeing that it would do so, the CNE has not published these results protocols (minutes).

He also said that he reviewed a small sample of the documents that are currently in the public domain, including the minutes published online by the opposition, and said that “They display all the security devices of the original results protocols.”

“This suggests that a key transparency safeguard would be available, as intended, with respect to any officially published results,” the experts said in the report, VOA reported.

The President of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, classified as “garbage” to the Panel of Experts for attempting to reveal its findings, as they had allegedly promised to keep the report confidential for the UN Secretary General.