Citizens are publishing photos of voting records
Originally published on Global Voices
Photo by Gabriela Mesones Rojo on July 30, 2024, Caracas, Venezuela. Used and edited by Melissa Vida with permission.
Venezuelans have been flooding the streets since July 29 to dispute the official results of Venezuela's much-awaited presidential election. Current president Nicolás Maduro was given a third term, one that would last until 2031.
On July 30, opposition leader María Corina Machado called demonstrators to gather at a peaceful popular assembly in order to show the printed voting tallies that would prove Maduro's electoral fraud.
Xiomara Pacheco, a 52 year-old nurse and mother of two, was waiting for Machado and González Urrutia's speech at this assembly. She told Global Voices:
Está claro que no podemos confiar en los números compartidos por el CNE, porque está muy claro que Maduro simplemente ya no tiene ningún tipo de apoyo. ¿ Si no, por qué ocultarían las actas de votación? ¿ Si no, por qué el CNE violaría tantas leyes y tantos protocolos?
It’s clear we can’t trust the numbers shared by the CNE, because it’s so clear Maduro simply doesn’t have any sort of support anymore. Why else would they hide the voting records? Why else would the CNE break so many laws and so many protocols?
The Popular Assembly, July 30, 2024. Photo by Gabriela Mesones Rojo, used with permission.
Pacheco voted in this crucial election with one hope in mind:
Mis dos hijos viven en el extranjero, también mis nietos, a los que ni siquiera he conocido porque nacieron fuera. Solo quiero que mi familia vuelva al país al que pertenecen.
My two children live abroad, so do my grandchildren, who I haven’t even met because they were born abroad. I just want my family back where they belong.
The Venezuelan political opposition, led by María Corina Machado and presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, as well as several governments such as Argentina, Chile, Perú, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala and Brazil, immediately contested the results published by the Venezuelan Electoral Council (CNE). They cited the abysmal discrepancy between the CNE's figures and data collected by independent surveys and election witnesses. According to opposition data, Edmundo González Urrutia had actually won with double Maduro's number of votes.
The opposition coalition accuses the current administration of withholding access of voting records in several electoral centers. Neither they nor impartial witnesses have access to the printed evidence that is required by law to count and audit the votes.
Election day was also plagued by reports of voter intimidation and even attempts of burning some ballot boxes at the hands of the Bolivarian National Guard.
Observer citizens from all over Venezuela legally shared voting records, as they had been stationed at the 30,000 voting centers across the country. They are dubbed the “Comanditos,” a structure created by the opposition coalition Comando con Venezuela in order to promote transparency and citizen verification ahead of the elections.
Eugenio Martínez, a Venezuelan journalist who specializes in elections, asked citizens on X (formerly Twitter) to share photos of voting records and to compare them to the official ones. Hundreds of observers flooded X with the voting records through the hashtag #buscatuacta (“look for your voting record”).
¿Podemos hacer un hilo colaborativo de la verificación ciudadana que hagan de las actas de la elección? Si tomaron una foto del acta de escrutinio de su mesa, compárenla con el acta que se está publicando en el website de difusión https://t.co/TlJc7SBMis
— Eugenio G. Martínez (@puzkas) July 30, 2024
Can we make a collaborative thread of your citizen verification of the election tallies? If you took a photo of the tally sheet of your polling station, compare it with the tally sheet that is being published on the dissemination website.
Many of these voting records were also sent to Comando con Venezuela. At the time of writing, the opposition holds 80 percent of the tallies, which they have published online.
Indeed, while the CNE's website is still shut down at the time of writing, due to an alleged cyberattack, Machado's team created a website where anyone who has voted in the election can see their voting record and the total of publicly available tallies gathered by Comanditos.
On the night of July 30, Machado and González held a press conference where they presented this website, proving González's win. Machado — a popular politician who was barred from running for president — said:
Venezuela tiene un nuevo presidente electo y es Edmundo González Urrutia. ¡Ganamos! Y todo el mundo lo sabe. (…)Y toda esta información coincide en que Edmundo obtuvo el 70% de los votos de esta elección. Y Maduro el 30% de los votos. Es la elección presidencial con la mayor diferencia de la historia.
Venezuela has a new president elect and it is Edmundo González Urrutia. We won! And everybody knows it (…) And all this information coincides in the fact that Edmundo got 70 percent of the votes in this election. And Maduro 30 percent of the votes. It is the presidential election with the biggest difference in history.
Journalist Eugenio Martínez explained in a tweet that:
La oposición acaba de hacer en 24 horas, algo que el CNE lleva años diciendo que no es posible técnicamente. Un site para consultar los resultados por mesa y ademas tener la imagen del acta de la mesa.
The opposition just made in 24 hours something that the CNE has been saying for years is not technically possible: a site to consult the results by voting table and the image of the table’s voting records.
It's the first time in Venezuela's history that an opposition candidate was able to obtain so many voting records. For many, this presents a damning case of fraud on Maduro's behalf, including for international observers like the Carter Center.
María Corina Machado in the Popular Assembly on July 30, 2024. Photo by Gabriela Mesones Rojo, used with permission.
Protests quickly spread in the capital Caracas and in other regions, mainly in low-income and working-class neighborhoods which are historical bastions for Chavismo.
People began to walk shouting against Maduro, and protestors with covered faces tore down campaign posters hanging on poles and walls.
Repression has always been the government’s strongest tool, and reports of police abuse and state repression are spreading on social media. Maduro’s government reported over 700 detentions while human rights NGOs have registered 14 deaths in the first two days of protests.
Key opposition figures were also kidnapped. Citizens recorded a SUV detaining and hauling away the national coordinator of the party Voluntad Popular, Freddy Superlano, his driver and other opposition activists. Voluntad Popular claims that, according to sources close to power, Freddy Superlano would have been tortured to “confess a false plot.”
More repression and detentions will come, as Maduro tries to guarantee his mandate without showing any evidence of his alleged victory.
