Although the report was confidential, the United Nations Secretary-General promised to publish the report on the elections in Venezuela on July 28, concluding that the process “failed to meet the basic standards of transparency and integrity that are essential to holding credible elections.”
According to the criteria of
The document was revealed on Tuesday night and states that the elections did not follow “national legal and regulatory provisions and did not comply with all stipulated deadlines,” the text reads.
The UN, which together with the Carter Center were the two independent organizations that participated as observers, stressed that “the announcement of the result of an election without the publication of its details or the delivery of the tabulated results to the candidates is unprecedented in contemporary democratic elections. This had a negative impact on the confidence of a large part of the Venezuelan electorate in the result announced by the CNE.”
Earlier, before the report was published, Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, which has a Chavista majority, lashed out at the UN observers.
“There are those from the UN panel of experts (…) they have no word, they are garbage without word, that panel of experts is a panel of garbage without word because they signed saying that the report is private,” said Rodríguez, referring to the position of making the report public, although it was of a private nature and only for the knowledge of the CNE.
Regarding the opposition’s minutes, alleged hacking of the CNE and results
The Panel of Experts said it reviewed “a small sample” of the minutes published by the opposition and concluded that “all of those reviewed exhibit all the security features of the original results protocols. This suggests that a key transparency safeguard may be available, as intended, with respect to any officially published results.”
Faced with the refusal of the National Electoral Council to publish the results, the opposition led by María Corina Machado and Edmundo González published the results on a web portal. On the page, more than 80 percent of the results can be seen and they give González as the winner. Meanwhile, the Chavistas have not presented any.
The UN report says the CNE reported a turnout of 59.97 percent of registered voters. Opposition parties reported similar turnout figures. This represents a significant increase from the 2018 presidential election (45.74 percent).
If only registered voters present in the country were considered, the level of participation would be even higher, the text says.
As all the contestants acknowledged, the electronic voting system was well designed and reliable, and was programmed to operate with significant audit procedures and the dissemination of results protocols (minutes) at the voting tables.
“The CNE had also implemented a robust mechanism for the results transmission process: the digital transmission of results from each voting machine to the CNE’s main tabulation center, with several levels of protection against unauthorized connections and cyberattacks,” the document details.
It also says that the electronic transmission of results worked well initially, but was abruptly stopped in the hours after the polling stations closed, with no information or explanation provided to the candidates at the time, or to the Panel.
At the time of announcing the results, the president of the CNE declared 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 communications system that could have shed light on the occurrence of external attacks against the transmission infrastructure.
In the early hours of July 29, 2024, the President of the CNE orally announced that President Nicolás Maduro had won the election with 5,150,092 votes (51.2 percent), followed by Edmundo González with 4,445,978 votes (44.2 percent), stating that results had been received from 80 percent of the voting tables.
On August 2, the CNE confirmed President Maduro as the winner with 6,408,844 votes (51.95 percent), followed by Gonzalez with 5,326,104 votes (43.18 percent), based on what the CNE said was 96.97 percent of the results from the tables.
“The announcements of results consisted of oral communications without infographic support. The CNE did not publish, and has not yet published, any results (or results broken down by voting table) to support its oral announcements, as provided for in the electoral legal framework,” the text reads.
Ana Maria Rodriguez Brazon – Weather correspondent – Caracas
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