More CNE cheating in Venezuela

ESDATA is an organization that has been studying diligently electoral statistics in Venezuela. As a blogger, one on occasion gets in his mail box some data before other folks, soemtimes even in modifiable format. I just got how the polling stations were manned last year.

The latest thing is the control by PSUV militants of the polling stations. That is, the more a polling station is controlled by PSUV militants, the more likely pro Chavez cheating can take place. NOTE: I am not implying that cheating will take place just because a polling station is PSUV controlled, just that the odds increase.

This would not be so bad if there were as many polling stations controlled by PSUV militants than there are PSUV militants in Venezuela, or if the opposition were allowed to control its share of polling stations. But the graph below shows us that the CNE is purposefully trying to put as many hard core chavistas as possible in charge of elections. It is important to remember two things before I get into the details of this graph:1) in Venezuela supposedly polling station members are randomly selected and 2) since 2004, those who signed for the recall election on Chavez are systematically barred from monitoring polling stations while it is now established publicly that supporting Chavez increases your chances to monitor election stations! (1)

Click to enlarge

In blue you can see how many electors are registered in the PSUV. This already is an anomaly: apparently the CNE published by mistake the names and ID of the folks who signed up in the PSUV last year. ESDATA lifted that date before it could be erased, a reverse Tascon list of sorts! As you can see by yourself, the total goes from 20 to 40% of the electors of a state. Interesting to see the official acknowledgment that the PSUV is not the mass party that chavismo wanted it to be

However the problem comes when you look at the electors selected to manage the voting stations: IN ALL STATES that number is larger than the ones you would expect (in yellow). And when you look at the the president of voting stations, the person that has authority, in red, the percentages now go from 30 to 70%!!!!!!!!!

I am sure that you can reach the same conclusion that I reached as to the partiality and bias of the CNE. Will the OAS, Carter Center and European Union observers have anything to say about that?

But as usual I am not satisfied the way data is given to me and I sorted it from the original graphic, that is, I ranked it from the state with the least PSUV members to the states with the most. We can thus see two things clearly, things that confirm what this blog has been saying all along.

1) The most populated and developed the state the less likely it is to have militant chavistas. In the left half you have Miranda, Caracas, Carabobo, Aragua, Lara and Zulia, the 6 most populous area of Venezuela, with the largest cities. And all with less than 30% PSUV militants. On the far right you have the most rural areas such as Apure or Cojedes, which favor Chavez much more.

2) I have also scored the different states according to their recent electoral history (red dots more pro Chavez, blue dots least pro Chavez). Thus curiously you can find alleged pro Chavez states Aragua, Bolivar and Lara on the left half of the chart, the one with the lower percentage of PSUV registered voters. Clearly, in those states the opposition has its best chance to dig for votes even if these states have been voting Chavez for a while. We could call these states the NiNi states. On the other hand Tachira looks more chavista than what we would have thought. Cryptic chavismo or deep polarization? After all Tachira voted the most against Chavez last year.

Conclusion? Well, the only way to protect your vote is to be present at closing time and watch how votes are counted and the voting process audited. If people lift their butts, organize themselves in monitoring squads, it really does not matter if the president of a station is PSUV or not, votes will be counted as they should be counted. The opposition would do well to explain such a graph to voters to convince them to work on election day besides going to vote.

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1) It is also true that you are paid for spending a week end at the polling station. Chavismo also uses that to make additional payments to its followers.

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