2013 Early Venezuela Presidential Election

[ag]

It's not likely a reocount will do anything. Even if they added a million Maduro votes to the count at the last moemnt, you'd have to have it recognized by the chavista courts. Ain't happening.

The main objective should be to try to trade the recount calls for concessions on how the elections and the judiciary are run.

[ag]

Even if they added a million Maduro votes to the count at the last moemnt, you'd have to have it recognized by the chavista courts

yes, you had it, had them, had them all for 400 years, and now you DON'T!  play your words upon words, there are better artists than you, my dear,

No lo entiendo.

[ag]

Way closer than I thought ...

But really, like Florida in 2000 ?

Venezuela's elections yesterday are not nearly as much of a joke as those of FL in 2000.

Do you have ANY doubt that, had Al Gore been winning by a margin of, say, 20,000 votes, his victory would have been recognized?

Do you have ANY doubt, that had Capriles been winning by a margin of 200,000 vote, his victory would have been recognized?

That's the difference, really.

[ag]

Do you have ANY doubt, that had Capriles been winning by a margin of 200,000 vote, his victory would have been recognized?

quite on the contra, there is no chance that a 1-2% Maduro victory will be recognized, in the international, (which think they run the show).

Do you mean the IV International? Just wondering.

[ag]

Capriles should accept his defeat, because that's like saying OH was stolen by the Bush folks in 2004 (which is probably more likely than the Maduro-people rigging this election).

I think you have some very serious misunderstanding of certain features of the respective electoral systems.  "Stealing" a large election is a lot harder, where things are decentralized and there are ways to appeal. Whether this particular election was stolen or not, it is a lot more realistically domable here. 

[ag]

I'm not surprised. The fact that results were down for hours, and especially the military meeting... WTH would they meet Capriles if he genuinely lost? I doubt these guys will relinquish power anytime soon.

That the results were down for hours is, unfortunately, a feature, not a bug. Somebody thought this was a right thing to do.  They do it by law this way.

[ag]

I think most likely they pulled a variant of Mexico '88: saw the real numbers, panicked, and fixed them. Difference is that they gave themselves a narrow victory for a plausibility figleaf.

Actually, that´s not a difference. In 1988 they gave Salinas exactly the same vote share: 50.7% - just enough to claim a "mandate". It was a three-way race, though, so the margin was a bit bigger.

Now, I don't, yet, really know, if they did something - perhaps, this is the true vote. But many signs are suspicious. Still, I would need to understand the details of the electoral system better.

[ag]

Does the CNE consist of Capriles-people as well, or is it "government-owned" ?

If the CNE consists of Capriles-people as well, it would be crazy to say they "fixed" these numbers by 500.000 votes without anyone complaining.

Of course, there were isolated problems in some precincts (2000 alltogether), but we are talking about more than 100K votes that were allegedly "fixed" ...

No Capriles people - where could they come from? The country has been dominated by Chavez for 15 years. One of the  5 commissioners might be an independent, though. The other 4, if I am not mistaken, have a reputation of being chavistas. No time to check now, though. There might be Capriles representatives observing the procedings - that I don't know.

[ag]

Maduro is very weak. He almost lost Barinas (Chavez home province). He'll need to do many things to prevent a recall in 2016. In 2018, candidate should be someone linked to Chavez, like Adam Chavez or Jorge Arreaza.

If, that is, he is still in Miraflores by 2016. Too weak - he will be replaced by somebody inside the regime well before the elections.

[ag]

Maduro won fair and square, the others a just sooks.

Square - might be. Fair - that's hard to sustain.
Unless the opposition presents enough evidence in the next few days that in a substantial number of polls the results were manipulated/falsified (along with a sufficiently clear explanation of how it was done), I will have to accept the results of the vote count showing Maduro's victory. In other words, I will accept that on the election day, Maduro obtained more votes than Capriles, without resorting to outright manipulation of the count.
Since Capriles participated in the process, that, in my view, would make Maduro's election reasonably legitimate. However, a fair election it was not - the entire process was heavily stacked in favor of the government.

[ag]

In this one I stand with Maduro. As much as we may criticize him, he won the election and Governors refusing to recognize elected President is not a tolerable situation.

Well, you will then be delighted to know that Bohdan the Hairy has just announced that MP's, who do not recognize Maduro, will not be allowed to speak in the National Assambley. I guess, the next step will be to deny those citizens, who do not recognize Maduro the right to vote in the consequent elections.

[ag]

So here are a few questions I have. Can somebody help?

1. It is now over 48 hours since the polls have closed. Where are the precinct-level returns? The CNE webpage has been impossible to access since the election day. The news sources report state-level results -and that's all. I can't even seem to find the municipal-level maps. Given that the official results are generated and reported ELECTRONICALLY, there must be an excel file or something of the sort somewhere. Is it publically available? To whom it is available, if it is not public?

2. In addition to the official precinct-level results, there was the "audit" of the 54% of the precincts. What were those precincts? Is there a list? Is it public? Where are the audit results - precinct-level or otherwise?

3. How is the randomization done to determine the 54% of the precincts to be recounted on the election night? Is the software/hardware used public? Has it been independently checked? In particular, is there any guarantee - I would take a word of a single qualified and informed independent observer as such a guarantee - that nobody can figure out which precincts would be recounted before the official results are reported?

3a. By the way, given that they actually count 54% of the precincts by hand, why the hell did they bother about computerizing the whole system to begin with? Ok, I get the control argument - properly used, the system can make manipulations harder. But 54% or 100% is not a major difference logistically. Why not insist on a 100% manual count on the election night?

BTW, I agree that any voto-por-voto recount now would be useless. It would only be easier to manipulate - the proper handcount should happen on election night.

3. I understand, that CNE BY LAW can only make an announcement of any numbers once the results are "irreversible". Who and why thought it desirable to prevent the public from observing the count as it is progressing? What was the justification advanced for introducing this legal norm?

4. What was the set of people who were monitoring the progress of the count in the CNE headquarters?

5. Though the progress of the count was never reported, there must be some record of which precincts reported at what time. Is that data available - anywhere, to anyone?

I am not, at this point, alleging outright counting fraud. I am just puzzling about the electoral system - and wondering about where to find the returns.  Anybody has any answers?

[ag]

PSUV claiming they'll put actas on their website.

Well, how nice of them.

But why in hell hasn't the CNE done it? They've invested a tonne of money in the computerized voting system - which is, at least, 54% useless. And they couldn't find a few bolivars to get the returns properly reported? Even the Russians put some numbers on the web the night of the election (true, many of those numbers they invent by repeatedly tossing the Election Commission Chairman's old socks upward and counting the number of times they stick to the ceiling - but, at least, they give us enough information to figure out what they do).

[ag]

So, it seems the CNE web page is available - but only from within Venezuela. I wish somebody could tell me exactly what is posted on it.

[ag]

So, it seems the CNE web page is available - but only from within Venezuela. I wish somebody could tell me exactly what is posted on it.

Hopefully Dave doesn't read your post and installs a similar version for election nights 2014/16.

Election night was 3 days ago.

The thing is, I may well conclude that they did count correctly. But I need data to figure this out one way or another. I can't get data. The entire thing is done in a way that seems designed to exasperate. 

[ag]

I am sufficiently computer-illiterate not to know how to do this. For the moment, if you could do this, could you just let me know what data are there? Do they have the precinct data - both the electronic count and the "audit"?

[ag]

Thanks a lot!

But this is only the official electronic result. Do they have the audit results posted - or, at least, the list of audited mesas?

[ag]

Not as far as I know. I'd be surprised if the original-original data, or at least the incriminating part, still exists. Just a hunch on my part.

I am not asking for an incriminating part. I am asking for the list of mesas that were audited - the famous 54%. I am operating on the assumption that nobody would be stupid enough to play with those - I want, first, to figure out the certifiably honest part. What interests me at the moment is the very simple statistic: the oficial results just in the 54% of the mesas that have been audited. For the moment, I want to take them at face value.

[ag]

Pity. Anyway, just eyeballing the data do not seem overly strange. One would have to do some statistical tests, but, at least, it does not seem to be too blatant. For the moment, I will wait for more evidence before making any conclusions. I do think they have a circuit breaker somewhere, but I don't see any obvious evidence of it being employed this time.

[ag]

Man, this was a boring election.

Looks like a scary post-election. At this point, the relevant question is, when is it becoming a self-coup, I am afraid.

[ag]

Who killed 7 people?

This seriously passed you by?

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/04/16/uk-venezuela-election-idUKBRE93C0B220130416

According to some reports, the father of one of those 7, I believe, has said that his son was, indeed, killed - by the chavista thugs, as the two of them were together, protesting against the government victory declaration. So, at the very least, I'd be very cautious about bringing this up.

[ag]

Think this is one of those moments when facts become essentially partisan things. Better to treat everything with caution.

True. But, at least, one thing is not in question (since it has long been known): there is a side that has paramilitary groups at its disposal - and that side isn't the opposition. Nor is the opposition in the control of the military and/or law-enforcement.

[ag]

Different kettle of fish claiming deaths, no? Namely there'd have to be victims bodies, evidence etc. This video suggests the news are reporting on their deaths - wouldn't they playing them down as a nondescript statistic if they were false? Actually, are the opposition contesting them?

From what I have seen, the opposition believes these to be caused by the government thugs.