2013 Early Venezuela Presidential Election

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From AP: Capriles is meeting with military brass, ditto Interior Minister. We know what this means.

We will know, if he comes out of that meeting.

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CNE members are going to the announcement spot.

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www.eluniversal.com

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They announced Maduro win w- 50.6% vs. 49.1% for Capriles.

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They did tinker enough.

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Will Capriles concede?

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Given how close this is, this may turn out nasty.

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Disgusting people.

Who exactly?

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Given how close this is, this may turn out nasty.

I sure hope Capriles doesn't go down without a fact.

Until today, Venezuela was a flawed democracy. Now it's officially become a sham democracy.

Like Florida 2000?

In exactly the same way that you are like a Przewalski horse.

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Given how close this is, this may turn out nasty.

I sure hope Capriles doesn't go down without a fact.

Until today, Venezuela was a flawed democracy. Now it's officially become a sham democracy.

Like Florida 2000?

In exactly the same way that you are like a Przewalski horse.

Well, I guess the comparison was unfair to Venezuela.

And to the horse.

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My ass. Authoritarian as Chavez was, his elections were at least reasonably legitimate. I hope Capriles and the entire country fight this disgrace of democracy. And Maduro? Just the tyrannical liar I thought he was.

Tyrannical? Don't exaggerate. He is a non-entity. His tyrany won't likely extend to more than the dinner menu choice at the Miraflores - and that, when no important guests are expected.

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Well, assuming Capriles accepts it, I think we should start taking bets on how long El Pajarito survives. Not that I expect his replacement to be any better - unless it is Diosdado (not very likely), it is going to be some proper Bolivarian oficer.

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Where is this evidence that the election was tinkered with or illegitimate? Because the results are counter to rumors on twitter? This has been the M.O. of the right in Venezuela for a while. Use the biased media, with Western support, to paint a picture of huge support for the opposition and then cry "stolen!" when the results go against them yet again. Come on.

The problem w/ getting evidence is that to properly document it one would have to go through Chavista courts.

BTW, up until now, at least, the opposition has formally recognized every Chavez victory. The "stolen" claims were never made by responsible players. Even though, of course, the government has always had the full machinery at its disposal, that has made elections anything but free and fair.   

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Florida 2000 was clearly stolen.

This is as clear to everyone as that you have hoofs on all four of your feet.

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but your attitude toward this is uncomfortably reminiscent of the Republicans when George Bush stole his election.

You may have a rather different meaning of the word "to steal" than the one I find in common use.

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What's the point of even talking about the possibility of stolen elections with people who won't admit that?

Indeed, it is not possible talking about elections at all, with somebody who would seriously claim that was "stealing".

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OK, so the question is whether this Venezuelan election was "borrowed".

The question is, whether Venezuelan election was conducted

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Eh, there were significant and documented irregularities in the Florida election (and even then I wouldn't call it "stolen," just not completely fair). The "evidence" here is that it took a while to count the votes and rumors on twitter said the other guy would win. Unless I'm missing something?

Is there any doubt that Al Gore's victory in Florida would have been recognized if he won by any detectable margin?

500 votes in a statewide election in Florida is less than the margin of error of the process. It is properly called a tie. The honest thing would be to determine the outcome of such close elections by a coin toss.

Whereas here there are serious doubts as to whether any Capriles victory would have been recognized.

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There were certainly irregularities in Florida, and I am fairly sure that with a proper counting of the ballots (and without the mass disenfranchisement that preceded the election) Gore would have won. Still, this doesn't even come close to pulling numbers out of their ass like the Chavists have blatantly done.

The problem is: in Florida in 2000 NO MATTER who would have been declared winner, one side would have had grounds to claim "irregularities". The voting process is simply not designed to determine such narrow leads. Properly speaking, when it is this close, a coin toss should be mandated.

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Wasn't there a prolonged period of time when results just stopped coming in to the official government election website? Then Maduro just gets announced the winner by a slight margin after the military assembles? Yeah, sounds perfectly legit.

The results were never coming to the government elections web site. Venezuela has a rather peculiar system, under which nothing is announced until the results are "irreversible".

The system is not completely idiotic/hackish. There are legitimate protections involved. But this one bit of it has always made me worried. There must be places, where the opposition is so weak it can't monitor things on its own. These must be known. Playing w/ the system there is that much easier, since there are no results published during the count. If they did have them published, they would have had to either 1) obviously delay reporting from those places or 2) revise the results later. As it is, there are many fewer eyes watching.

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And it wasn't just that they assembled, it was that they called Capriles in to meet with them, as did the interior minister. Say what you will about Chavez, Maduro is almost transparently an election thief.

If it is true about the military/interior forcing Capriles to accept, there is no thieving involved. It is called a robbery. Then, again, if that's the case, I doubt Maduro himself had much to do w/ the robbery itself. He would be just the temporary beneficiary.

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Am I the only one who thinks that their 5 score for political freedoms from Freedom House needs to be improved now that they had a Presidential election with a 1.5 point margin of victory?

Yes. 6 would be more appropriate.

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For the record, the CNE website was shut down all day out of "concerns it would be hacked", so even if results were there its not like anyone could see them.

Yeah, I've noticed I couldn't access it for the last year's results. The system has quite a few circuite breakers built in. Probably, none of that would have mattered if there were courts. But, guess what?

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Capriles calling for a full recount.

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"Voto por voto". I think I've heard it somewhere else