The cloud of Electoral Fraud in Venezuela becomes darker

A series of interesting developments have appeared through Tuesday.

The concrete element, and perhaps even funny, was that many ballots were found flying around the roads of Anzoategui. Some protection from the army!!!! But that always happens in all elections around the world: some ballots somewhere always end up n the trash can. The question is really how many were thrown away.

Now for the real thing. Warning: if you do not like statistics you might want to stop reading now.

FIRST: The voting took place as follows. For example, a voting center could have its voters divided in three equal groups for three voting machines. Three voter rolls were printed. Three results were emitted in an official acta and sent electronically to Caracas. Right now these actas, as I explained earlier, do match with what the OAS and the Carter Center and Sumate got. However...

SECOND: Let's say that we have three groups A, B, C. Let me organize a little table so that the reader can understand better. I am making up an hypothetic set or results, but this set represents the statistical trend already observed in several states of Venezuela.

Groups	Total Electors	SI votes	NO votes
A	307	104	118
B	321	104	127
C	299	104	98

Any statistician, or scientist like myself, will right then and there detect that something is fishy. That is, the odds for such a result to happen are incredibly low, at the level of winning the lottery. The percentages could be all identical but not the actual numbers.

But of course, this could happen by sheer luck in a given electoral center. Unfortunately, it does happen in many centers in many states and with less than 30 000 electoral centers the odds of such a pattern are just simply impossible to happen it the "natural" way. And as I write TV reports more and more of such cases and even stranger patterns.

There is some really hard explanation to be made there.

Now, I do want to stress something. EVEN IF the government cheated to ensure an electoral victory, that does not mean it did not get it. That mechanism would have just improved his victory margin. But it could also have reversed a result that was in the favor of the opposition. In other words, it is essential that the ballots are counted. And even so, before they are counted, it should be clear that the integrity of the ballot boxes can be certified.

Let me add some personal info here: when I voted NO ONE checked whether I dropped my ballot in the box. The only thing they checked is whether I did push my SI button. I know of one person that actually walked out of the voting place with his ballot in hand, having forgotten to drop it under the box. Equally, in the mess that my polling station was, anyone could have dumped "extra" ballots in the box.

My opinion? There is enough evidence for me to seriously question Sunday's vote. Some of the fraud possible fraud mechanism I already sensed them and wrote on them. The voting system was ripe for all sort of fraudulent actions and it amazes me that the Coordinadora did fall for it. In their haste to have the referendum before the August 19 deadline, they caved in the blackmail of the CNE. The Coordinadora leadership will have to account for that and it is interesting that the main leaders are strangely silent, leaving all the work to Primero Justicia, some state governors, Sumate and Un Solo Pueblo, the only folks that came out to fight back. Though in all fairness not a single significant leader has accepted the result.

Finally, Julio Borges said on TV this morning, as I typed, that Carter and the OAS were warned Monday early not to rush into availing the results. But Carter forged ahead anyway, only to start backing up Tuesday, though apparently as stubborn as he can get by adding that he did not expect the results to change significantly. How does he know that since the Carter Center did not conduct even exit polls? Why did he even need to say such a thing? Remember his term in office? There is a flashback at the Carter that lost against Reagan.

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PS: I must apologize for not putting links as I do usually. The pace of news is dizzying and I rely a lot on TV which is of course hard to "link". Newspapers are fast outdated these days. I try to do my best to sort out between iddle gossip and reasonable evidence. I hope that the readers of this blog do understand the situation and forgive me if I make a mistake, and even be kind enough to point it so that I can make the apropriate correction.