Venezuela: Independent experts have verified electoral receipts from the opposition

The experts from the American Carter Center, who were observers during the election, state that the electronic system used to conduct elections in Venezuela worked as it should.

In a meeting with the Organization of American States (OAS), they stated that the ruling party and others involved “know what the truth is”.

The Carter Center group was one of two invited by the authorities to observe the July 28 presidential election in Venezuela. The electoral authorities were quick to declare that President Nicolás Maduro won the election, while the opposition believes that their candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won.

Receipt

Since then, they have argued over thousands of receipts from voting machines, known as actas. These have long been considered the only real documentation of election results in Venezuela. Each of the 30,000 voting machines used in the election has printed several such receipts, and participating parties are entitled to a copy once the results have been submitted to the National Electoral Council.

The official electoral authorities, who are loyal to the authorities, declared Maduro the winner just hours after the polls closed. However, they did not publish results by voting machine, as they have done in previous elections – the authorities alleged that their website had been hacked.

The opposition has obtained receipts from more than 80 percent of the machines – and published them online. The authorities then claimed that these receipts were fake, and used the opportunity to prosecute several opposition politicians, including Gonzalez.

Would not declare the victor

– The voting system is electronic, but gives us documentation on paper – proof of what the machines report. That is what was collected by tens of thousands of observers, not only from the opposition, but also from the ruling party PSUV. Everyone has the same information, says Jennie Lincoln from the Carter Center.

At the same time, she did not want to declare Gonzalez the winner, as she believes that is the job of the authorities.

The OAS and a number of countries in North and South America have called on the Venezuelan authorities to publish the results broken down by voting machine.