Jesus Vargas/Getty Images
Jesus Vargas/Getty Images
On Sunday, July 28, millions of Venezuelans cast votes in presidential elections that offered two divergent paths for the country. The race pitted Nicolás Maduro, incumbent heir of Hugo Chávez’s political movement that has governed the country since 1999, against Edmundo González of the Unitary Platform. González, a former ambassador and relatively unknown stand-in candidate, was backed by opposition standard-bearer María Corina Machado, who was barred from running herself.
Questionable pre-election conditions aside, Sunday’s election fell far short of international standards and violated Venezuelans’ basic political rights to elect a government of their choice.
Here’s what you need to know:
After the stroke of midnight on Monday, July 29, the National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral, CNE) read out the results of its first bulletin. According to their figures, with 80 percent of precincts reporting, Nicolás Maduro had secured 51.20 percent of the vote. Edmundo González trailed behind by seven percentage points. With this “overwhelming and irreversible trend,” CNE president and government acolyte Elvis Amoroso declared Nicolás Maduro the winner.
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As of August 2, the CNE had not elaborated on source data that would allow for auditing. The government attributed delays in reporting the initial figures to a “terrorist” attack that hindered transmission. The prosecutor general alleged the electoral system suffered a hacking attack that originated in North Macedonia, while more recently, Maduro claimed Elon Musk masterminded the attack. The CNE’s audit of telecommunication networks scheduled for July 29, which would have been essential for investigating any cyberattack, was canceled without explanation.
The opposition went into the election clear-eyed about the probability of electoral fraud, given the dim prospects of Maduro willingly stepping down with international arrest warrants in his name. So far, their strategy has centered around collecting and publishing voting tally receipts to challenge the results published by the CNE.
The Carter Center, the only accredited international observer to make a public evaluation of the election’s validity, demanded on July 29 that the CNE release disaggregated precinct data to audit the CNE’s figures. Once its staff had left the country, the Carter Center issued a damning statement declaring that the elections “cannot be considered democratic.” A UN expert panel is expected to issue findings to the Secretary-General. Unlike the Carter Center, however, their report is confidential.
“Venezuela’s electoral process did not meet international standards of electoral integrity at any of its stages and violated numerous provisions of its own national laws.”
—The Carter Center
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The CNE has long been fraught with conflict over its neutrality, with government allies occupying most positions on the court. Electoral conditions in the run-up to the election were neither free nor fair. Among the most egregious examples is the government’s spurious ban on María Corina Machado holding office, and dozens of arbitrary detentions for political purposes. Nonetheless, both the Maduro and opposition campaigns agreed to hold elections, thanks in large part to the concessions and commitments outlined in the Barbados Agreement.
To fully appreciate how the election results are not credible, it is crucial to understand the voting process in Venezuela. The Venezuelan voting system is electronic. Each polling station has a voting machine that, after the polls close, prints a tally sheet (acta) with the results from that station before the data is electronically transmitted to the CNE for the nationwide vote count. Plan República (the military) takes the original acta for safeguarding, and each poll watcher is provided with a copy. Each tally sheet has a unique QR code, alphanumeric code, and digital signature, which serve to verify its authenticity.
The CNE, the prosecutor general, and Maduro alleged the CNE’s system was hacked. Even if that proved to be true, the actas would not be affected because—as explained here—they are printed before the electronic transmission. Therefore, publishing the copies of the tally sheets would be enough to examine the electoral results announced by the National Electoral Council as well as the veracity of the opposition’s claims, but the Council has refused to do so.
Building on prior experience, the opposition prepared for this scenario and instructed their poll watchers to scan and upload a copy of the actas into a system created with the purpose of safeguarding the evidence. The opposition claims to have 82 percent of them, and they calculate that the opposition obtained 67 percent of the vote versus the 30 percent obtained by Maduro.
On July 31, Maduro appealed to the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) for a constitutional writ of petition. The contents of this petition are not public, and therefore his intentions and arguments are unclear. On the following day, the TSJ admitted the petition for review. Due to the lack of independence and impartiality of the judiciary, academics, activists, and the Carter Center contend that a decision by the Supreme Court would do little to clarify the issue.
There has been widespread concern amongst the international community regarding the Venezuelan elections, especially the lack of disaggregated data from polling sites, which blocks efforts to audit the results. Critically, high-level interlocutors from Colombia and Brazil, who maintain rapport with Maduro, have ramped up pressure on the CNE to release the full election results and records. After Colombian chancellor Luis Gilberto Murillo emphatically called for the CNE to comply, President Gustavo Petro of Colombia took to X to exhort the Maduro government to “allow the elections to conclude peacefully by permitting transparent scrutiny with vote counting.”
Celso Amorim, a top foreign policy advisor of President Lula da Silva of Brazil, accompanied the electoral process in situ. Following the election, he asserted that “What the government has given so far is a single number, but they need to show how they arrived at that number: record by record.” Despite Maduro’s assurances that precinct data would be released “in the coming days,” Amorim left Venezuela describing his mood as “worried.”
The U.S. has firmly rebuked the CNE for failing to publish full results within the 48 hours required by Venezuelan law. After the deadline passed, the U.S.’s top diplomat for Latin America, Brian Nichols, said before the OAS Permanent Council that opposition candidate Edmundo González had won the election “given the overwhelming evidence.” This was later reaffirmed by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, also expressed skepticism about the election results, but a full EU resolution that would have highlighted the vote’s irregularities was vetoed by Hungary.
Strong rebukes from seven countries in Latin America and the Caribbean led Venezuela’s foreign minister Yván Gil to suspend diplomatic relations with them. To date, seven governments in the hemisphere—Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines—recognized the results of the CNE and congratulated Maduro, along with Russia, China, and Iran.
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Thousands of Venezuelans have taken to the streets in protest of the electoral authorities’ lack of transparency. Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino appeared on television, promising to crush what he called “a coup” initiated by “the far-right” with help from foreign powers. This is particularly worrisome given the violent repression authorities used to quell protests in 2014, 2017, and 2019.
According to Human Rights Watch, at least 20 people had been killed in the repression as of the afternoon of July 31. Attorney General Tarek William Saab placed the number of arrests at 1,062 in that same period, including key opposition figure Freddy Superlano, who as of the moment of publication remains forcibly disappeared. Repression from security forces and colectivos—armed pro-government groups—prompted the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to issue a statement calling on authorities to respect the right of Venezuelans to protest and assemble, and for election officials to release the full election results.
Meanwhile, Venezuelan officials have intensified their rhetoric against political opponents and protestors. Congressmen Jorge Rodríguez and Diosdado Cabello have called for the jailing of leaders of the opposition, accusing Machado and González Urrutia of leading a “fascist conspiracy.” In addresses on television and social media, Maduro has promised to send people arrested in protests to maximum security prisons with minimum prison sentences of 15 years.
On July 30, he encouraged citizens to submit reports about protestors on VenApp, a mobile app citizens use to voice complaints about public services and other issues to government authorities. Instead, the app became a tool for persecution by reporting neighbors participating in protests or affiliated with the opposition’s campaign. After pressure from civil society organizations, it was removed from the Apple and Google Play stores, but it continues to operate for those who had already downloaded it.
