How the Venezuelan Electoral Fraud took place

As the hours go by, it is becoming clearer that something went really wrong in the voting system. Many charges have already been advanced, some silly, some serious. The serious charges have actually been considered serious enough that the Coordinadora Democratica, CD, has refused to go to the verification act that was hastily obtained today from the CNE by the Carter Center and the OAS, a CNE which until now was adamant in refusing it. Why is the CD refusing now to go along?

One reason, we are already on Wednesday night and who knows how the ballot boxes were preserved. Unless all the witness and workers of the voting stations can be gathered to verify that the security checks that exist on the boxes are the ones they put themselves, there is no security that "someone" has not played foul.

Another reason is that the nature of the fraud makes a random selection of tables almost irrelevant. To explain this point I have made yet another very simplified graph. Below we can see an imaginary electoral district with five schools that served as voting centers. Schools B and E were assumed to be more likely to be in favor of the opposition. Thus, the voting program was given a "top" for the SI. I have written below what the real SI was. In school B one machine had less SI than planned and hence its 119 score instead of the 122 ceiling. Schools A, C and D were esteemed safer and thus not tampered with. The SI number is the real number in these schools. The decision to which machines to tamper with could be easily made depending on the signature collection pattern of the November 2003 petition against Chavez, for example. Or on local polls. Or local party activists info as to the mood in the neighborhood.

Now, what does happen when the "quick count" is made by the Carter Center? With a green star I indicate which would be the randomly selected MACHINES. The results would be for example 104 (A), 122(B), 132 (C) and 114(E). Obviously this distribution seems normal and ANYONE doing such a sampling would find the same distribution even picking up a different machine in each center. However, if my sampling takes all the machines in a center and compares it with all the machines of another center, quickly some strange distribution would become apparent. For example if luck has that the draw is for the three machines of school E, someone should raise an eyebrow when seeing 114, 114 and 114. But if the draw was for school C, nothing strange would have been observed and the fraud in schools B and E would pass unnoticed!

That is why the Coordinadora Democratica insists on selecting machines from specific areas as a random selection would without a doubt attenuate the apparent fraud.

To end this I want to explain why the fraud was actually discovered. I think it was well planned and with normal results, that is, a clear NO victory, it would have probably gone undetected and would have just improved the margin of victory. But chavismo committed two, and perhaps three crucial mistakes.

Mistake 1: their calculations were probably based on polls favoring them in June. In July the situation had tightened.

Mistake 2: they really believe their own fairy tale that the signatures collected were fraudulent and that at any rate they represented ALL of the opposition.

Mistake 3: this mistake is probably due to Chavez arrogance itself. He probably insisted that the SI be no more than the signatures collected. After all, he had to accept the referendum and the fact that he was ridiculed by not being able to prove any fraud. Glory and/or revenge are in his mind, as the good narcissistic personality he is.

Unfortunately the SI were more than planned. This is why so many machines reached the set TOP and the fraud became apparent.

Now, I must stress one thing. This does not prove by itself that the SI won. There is no way to know the truth unless there is a guarantee that the ballot boxes have all been kept safe and are all counted. Just as if we had started with a manual ballot. Back to square one.

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.

Blooggers are hot stuff!

My fellow blogger from the Sixth Republic was at Altamira yesterday!!!! We do have an eyewitness account from one of the bloggers that I quote regularly!!!!!!!!!!!

Just in case: Alexandra Beech is a real person. I have met her and so have met her people from the Chavez side such as Eva Golinger. Just in case someone were to doubt her existence. Actually some have doubted my own existence so perhaps this arguments is not good enough. But well, there is no way to please all.

Meanwhile read her account! You will also get a sharp analysis of what motivates, perhaps, the hurry that Carter has demonstrated this time, while until now he had been rather flegmatic. Not to be missed!

Carter just spoke!
Live reporting again!

Apparently Carter and the OAS have realized that their hurried declarations of yesterday has been a mistake and they have requested an additional audit, the missing one, painted in red in the graph I posted yesterday.

There are still a few questions as to how this will take place, and, for me, if the boxes have been kept safe from any tampering. But at least that audit will be made.

In another significant development a lot of evidence have surfaced today of electoral fraud. I do not know, nor can I state, whether this new stuff is enough to change the result, and Carter said neither that audit nor the new evidence would greatly change the result. But then again Carter said yesterday that there was no need for him to stay and that he was going home for his wife birthday. Looks like he will have more time to shop for a birthday present for Rosalyn in the artisan shops of Caracas.

An update on the possible electoral fraud in Venezuela

Let me start first by saying, now that spirits are cooling some, that I had contemplated a possible Chavez victory a few days ago, and gave the reasons why Chavez could win. Thus I am intellectually prepared to accept that Chavez could have survived the Recall Election.

Unfortunately as the hours keep passing there is more and more questions arising, and no answers coming. It does not matter what is the alleged margin of victory of Chavez if the opposition does not recognize it. It does not matter what the Carter Center and the OAS say if they cannot convince the opposition to accept it. I will talk about their actions in a later post, one that I am sure will not please them since until yesterday I have been a strong defender of Carter even when he was vilified by most of the opposition.

Right now there is only one point that I want to stress (Francisco has a whole litany of possible fraud elements that you can consult, I hate redundancy). As I am writing the CNE stands firm in its refusal to allow for any manual recounting of paper ballots, THE ONLY THING THAT COULD ESTABLISH ONCE AND FOR ALL THAT THE RESULT WAS FAIR. There is no other way to settle the issue and IT HAS TO BE DONE TODAY AS ALREADY TAMPERING OF THE BALLOT BOXES IS POSSIBLY TAKING PLACE AS I WRITE.

I do not know about you, but for me the CNE is acting EXACTLY as if it were cheating and trying to cover the evidence. Period.

It is the duty of the CNE to play clean, or the blood spilled in Venezuela will be its fault. For those who saw the pitiful and almost hysterical presentation of Jorge Rodriguez yesterday, you should be convinced now that there is a problem, that he looks more like a man on the run than the assured statesman he would like us to believe he is. How un-shrink like, no?.

For those who winced at my predictions for the next year in Venezuela

As I was writing the preceeding post, where I paint a fictional vision of Venezuela events for the next 365 days, real time events were already justifying what I was writing. Actually, had I known what was going on in Altamira at the time I would have written an even worse scenario.

Chavistas shooters were firing point blank towards unarmed protesters in Altamira. If you have any doubt look at the picture that comes with the article.
1- one guy is decked in chavista drag
2- the three of them are shooting standing up, aiming, visibly knowing that no one was going to shoot back. Perfect cowardice.

There is only one conclusion: they were ordered by someone to shot at the opposition small rally (a video shows one of them talking through a radio).

Now my question to Chavez supporters from overseas: what will it take for you to start at least condemning such actions and demand from your idol that he craks down on such people? If he won the Recall Election fair and square why such violence?

Somehow I suspect that as usual you will dodge the issue again. Some democrats...

Chavez third chance in office: one year after surviving the Recall Election.
From your correspondent in Caracas, August 15 2005

In a few days Venezuela will hold its third election in one year and there is absolutely no guarantee that this unfortunate country will find any peace.

It has been one year since Hugo Chavez has managed to survive the Recall Election effort. After having won in 1998 and survived the April 2002 coup Chavez was improbably given a third shot at ruling Venezuela on August 15 by fending off a Recall Election effort. His emotional rule and his populist style had allowed him to have the electors overlook many shortcomings to his administration, in particular a high jobless rate and a social division never seen before in this country. The high price of oil since 2002, courtesy of September 11, helping quite a lot.

There was not going to be any honeymoon period this time. The opposition after having tried to demonstrate that the elections had been rigged, could not make their case heard and the OAS and the Carter Center finally exited a country where they had been trapped for too long. Certainly for them the Iraq problem, the high oil prices and the US election had become more important than Venezuela. One just had to look at the welcome given to the Chavez survival by the oil markets.

But any hope of stability were to be quickly dashed.

No one in the opposition accepted the results. Eventually when some verifications were allowed by the Electoral Board it became quickly apparent that the process could not be audited. But observers had left and certainly there was not much that they could do at any rate.

To aggravate things, Chavez victory speech in the wee hours of August 16 had not been promising, and in spite of a more conciliatory attitude in the next few days it became quite clear that he was in a vengeful mode. Benefiting from a slight improvement in his National Assembly position due to the death of a major opponent and to the trauma created by the dubious election, Chavez hurried to complete the packing of the high court with his acolytes, passed a new law of police which ended up the local management of security forces, modified the civil code to ban a few "felonies" such as vocal criticism to public employees, recovered centralized control over healthcare, curtailed financial autonomy of the regions, and worked again on trying to muzzle the media.

But this did not mean much as the opposition quickly bounced back, more united than ever in front of the naked attempt at absolute control from power. In fact, quickly repression had to set in. In Maracaibo on October 5 an electoral rally was confronted by a squad of chavista sympathizer. Unaccountably the Army intervened and left 7 killed and 15 hurt, only 2 of the victims from the chavista side. A few days after a mysterious explosion in a gas line was used as an excuse for the government to impose a curfew in Zulia state while governor Rosales riding very high in the polls was arrested. The Maracaibo massacre would mark a definite turn in the strategies of the opposition.

The December regional elections turned out into a nightmare. The opposition refused to run under the automated system that was used for the Recall Election. The insistence of the chavista majority to use a system that had proven so useful created an impasse when the opposition decided to do an alternate write-in at the polls and refusing to recognize any elected official that would come out of the ballot. The resignation of the 2 CNE member that had become mere wallpaper at the CNE did not help. The opposition actually refused international observers and rejected any talk with the Carter Center that suffered a rather severe embarrassment. With street violence, observers did not come. The result was of course an almost complete sweep of all local authorities, while the curfew on election day did not stop the violence while a couple of dozen more people were killed. The few challenged results were quickly dismissed by the servile high court, or put in the back burners while chavistas were set into office.

Chavez using his abundant resources had been able not only to maintain his expensive and inefficient Misiones, but was able to bankrupt one of the media channel n Venezuela while expanding the reach of the state media. The remaining media, still allowed to criticize a state where there was no way to obtain redress, were forced to conform to a new code that limited in time and schedule talk shows and opinion programs. By early 2005, 2 regional papers closed and one of the main daily in Caracas "was sold" to more favorable Chavez interests.

But 2005 also brought Chavez new problems. The spending rhythm could not be maintained. Not only the growth of spending had continued through the 4th quarter of 2004 in order to win the local election, but it had increased while corruption kept taking an ever larger share. A new decrease of the oil barrel under the still very high 35 USD per barrel was too much for Venezuela where oil production remained hopelessly stuck. On January 4th 2005 the government finally devaluated the currency from 1950 to the USDA to 2480. But it was not enough. Spending had to be cut, oil prices went further down as a slight economic recession started in the world. By April 2005, a new devaluation brought the Venezuelan bolivar to 2985.

The meager recovery of 2004 had only been a relative recovery when compared to the disastrous 2003 performance. The 2005 devaluations increased inflation and dropped the Gross Domestic Product by an incredible 3 % in spite of still reasonable good oil prices, wiping any apparent gain of 2004. Clearly, the only foreign investments remained limited to public work projects and the oil industry, all the rest of the National production remained woefully underfinanced while the government tried all sorts of ad hoc remedies to maintain the food supply. Basically all the extra income was spent on food imports, unproductive social programs destined mainly to declared Chavez supporters and corruption. By June 2005 the per capita income had dropped 4 % from the June 2004 income. With the aggravation that the Misiones were not reaching as many people as in June 2004 and the jobless rate remained stubbornly high.

But the opposition in spite of all the brakes put on it since August 2004 kept active. Two petitions for a referendum on the High Court and on the media laws were simply forbidden as "unconstitutional" and collection of signatures was simply not allowed. This increased the outrage and brought again more violence in the streets as lower classes started feeling the new recession. An incredibly successful mass movement blocked all of Caracas streets in March 28 in spite of the arrest of 3 dozen organizers. Similar movements every week blocked Maracaibo, then Barquisimeto and finally Valencia where Acosta Carles, the contested governor elected under blatant fraud, send in the army while quartering the state police and 21 people were killed with scores injured.

This was too much for the international opinion. If certainly foreign powers were no where near direct intervention, Venezuela had become less crucial for oil and even the recent events had not affected the oil prices. Much more graver were evidence of Venezuelan association with the FARC and leftist group in Bolivia that finally were unmasked without a doubt. Chavez suddenly on the defensive again, again tried to gain time trying to lure the opposition into a National Assembly election with the bait that that way they could revert laws if they won. Surprisingly this time the opposition accepted. The fact was that the loss of local elections had not been dramatic since the new laws of November 2004 had left local authorities with very little else to do but collect garbage.

The opposition this time obtained a ballot voting system as it would have been impossible for Chavez to have such an election recognized if the opposition did not participate. Still Chavez did balk at an outright take over hoping probably to reach final takeover legally as he had been reaching it progressively if chaotically. However, he did manage to change the electoral distribution which allowed him more potential representatives from districts supposedly favorable. After all, used to rule with a 2 vote majority, there was a fair chance that he could maintain such an advantage. But amazingly the opposition celebrated quick and efficient primaries and presented a unique list through the country. Chavismo found itself with an obvious popular weakening after a year of no visible progress. All polls coincided that chavismo might barely get 1/3 of the Assembly to come from the August elections. In spite of all the news control, the low finances, the opposition, perfected its grass roots movement through Internet, small local papers, a return to the public speakers, etc….the opposition finally had a very well honed machinery that was independent of all that Chavez could do or say.

Faced with a possible parliamentary loss Chavez made his move. With yet another set up he managed to close one newspaper and arrest 8 more political leaders running for office, thus running unopposed in 8 districts. The charges were on drug trafficking, already used in the past but this time with success thanks to the servile judiciary. With a new security decree, the government limited the campaigning ability of the opposition. To avoid a new embarrassing rejection, the Carter Center did not offer its services. But surprisingly the European Union almost appointed itself as observer, threatening to cut off Chavez from the international scene in front of a prostrated US, and an OAS totally discredited from its recent failures in Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba were it showed unable to effectuate any pressure with the recent problems there.

Thus in a few days Venezuela will vote again and the National Assembly that will come out of it will either set in stone Chavez authoritarian regime or start its unraveling considering his proven inability at propitiating any sustained economical growth. One thing is certain, more blood will be shed.