Although any country that challenges domination by United States corporate or military power will inevitably be the target of a sustained demonization campaign, the lies consistently issued in a torrent against Venezuela are beyond the usual level of invective. Venezuela is the most lied-about country in the corporate press of the Global North, especially in U.S. corporate media outlets.
That Venezuela has sought to align its economy to benefit its own people, instituting an impressive array of social services, health programs and political structures to facilitate grassroots participation, has drawn the consistent ire of U.S. authorities. An unrelenting cascade of lies is necessary to generate public support for the unrelenting campaign targeting the Bolivarian Revolution.
We’ve had more than a month of daily screeds declaring the Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro has lost his bid for re-election. How is this determined? The U.S. government declared that Maduro must go, continuing an offensive that began as soon as took office following the untimely death of Hugo Chávez. That seems to be all the “proof” needed. The right-wing opposition to Maduro and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) screamed that it would not recognize the results of the July 28 election months ahead of time — if they were so confident of victory why denigrate the election in advance? — and predictably screamed louder when the results were announced.
Before we dive into the details, which leaves the opposition’s case too weak to be sustained, let’s think about a parallel. Donald Trump and his fascist wanna-be followers said any result in which he lost to Joe Biden would not be recognized and four years later they continue to insist on a Trump victory. Even the most cursory examination shows the speciousness of the Trump gang’s complaints, and every court challenge has been swiftly swatted down. Or in Brazil, another aspirant to a dictatorship, Jair Bolsonaro, similarly claimed the vote was rigged; nobody other than his hard-core followers takes such claims seriously.
Venezuelans rally for the PSUV (photo by Francisco Trías/Tricontinental)
Why then should we take the claims of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) opposition coalition and its candidate, Edmundo González, seriously? The PUD has yet to provide definitive proof that it won the election, much less with an absurd 70 percent of the vote. Given the large reservoir of support for the Maduro administration and the PSUV, the PUD would have given itself a modicum of respectability had it conjured a more plausible total, say just above 50 percent. Just on the basis of the 70 percent claim, already our eyebrows should be raised. Using the work of investigative reporters who have delved into the alleged voting records, which will be discussed below, the opposition’s claims fall apart. But even without that investigation, what locales have been presented? Undoubtedly, there are neighborhoods where the PUD did score 70 percent or perhaps more. But how representative are those? Another question not asked. But the investigations reveal that even most of these alleged voting records posted online by the PUD are doctored. In plain language, the evidence indicates they are not real.
To be sure, it would be for the best for Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) to post the detailed records so many, not only the opposition, demands. Under Venezuelan law, the CNE had 30 days to post those results and we are past that deadline. An online newspaper that supports the Venezuelan government, the Orinoco Tribune, on September 3 issued a call for the prompt publishing of the detailed election results, noting the cyberattacks and attacks on the country’s electricity system that undoubtedly have hampered the CNE’s work but nonetheless pointing out alternatives to publishing on its website that should be utilized promptly. These delays only add doubt to an already controversial situation.
Interestingly, but of course not surprisingly, there has been not a word in U.S. corporate media about the one party that was blocked from a candidate of its own choosing — the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). A ruling by the Supreme Court shamefully imposed a new leadership on the PCV, which the party sternly denounced as an illegal intervention in its internal affairs. The PCV said the seven people the court imposed as its new leadership are not party members and thus cannot occupy party offices. As a result of this gross interference, the PCV did not run a proper campaign because the imposed leadership backs Maduro. Even firm supporters of the PSUV government should condemn this meddling.
Why did the opposition refuse to participate in the examination?
What stands out here is that the PUD would not provide its alleged evidence to the Supreme Court of Venezuela after President Maduro asked that the high court examine the results announced by the CNE. There were eight other candidates other than President Maduro and Ambassador González. Yet Ambassador González was only one of the 10 candidates to refuse to provide the ballot records in their possession. All nine of the other candidates did so. Instead, the PUD created a website and posted their alleged ballots online, a violation of Venezuelan law that states only the CNE, an independent governmental branch, is authorized to do so. (How these ballot records are created and why candidates and parties would have them will be explained below.)
The Orinoco Tribune reported on August 23, in an article detailing the process the Supreme Court followed, “the magistrates concluded that the bulletins issued by the CNE were supported by the voting records transmitted by each of the voting machines and are in full agreement with the data provided by the national aggregation centers.” This was predictably denounced by Ambassador González, the PUD and the PUD’s leader, María Corina Machado, who has been involved in more than one plot to forcibly unseat the government. It can also be noted that the PUD includes the two discredited corporate parties, Democratic Action and COPEI, that had alternated in power until the sweeping Chávez victory of 1998 brought about the Bolivarian Revolution, which those parties have bitterly opposed every since, to the point of endorsing the 2002 coup that unseated Chávez for two days before popular resistance put him back in power.
If the PUD really possesses evidence of fraud, as they continue to loudly assert, why won’t they put forth their evidence? Their refusal should raise doubts, but evidently not for the corporate media, faithful stenographers of the U.S. government and U.S. multinational capital on all things Venezuela. Notably, all other candidates attended an August 2 Supreme Court hearing, held as part of the electoral audit process. At this hearing, all presidential candidates were formally notified that they were required to submit “all required legal documents of juridical relevance,” including all ballot records.
Venezuela remains in the cross-hairs (photo courtesy of Venezuelanalysis)
Other candidates contesting the presidential election confirmed their participation in the Supreme Court’s examination. One of those candidates, Claudio Fermín of Soluciones, called for all candidates to back their claims with evidence. He said, “What is not comprehensible is that some claim to have the voting records [that backed their electoral victory] but do not submit them [to the court]. The instance to resolve this matter is the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, not social media or a virtual court, and much less the heads of state or ambassadors of six or seven foreign powers.”
One of the reasons the far right opposition cites for its alleged landslide victory are polls that supposedly predicted a González landslide victory. But whose polls? The poll cited was produced by an outfit called Edison Research. It has been reported that Edison Research is a “firm that is closely linked to the US government and does work for US state propaganda outlets that were founded by the CIA,” according to an Orinoco Tribune report. The Edison exit poll forecast a 65 percent share for Ambassador González. The Tribune report noted that the polling firm Hinterlaces, which the newspaper called “the most respectable independent firm in the country,” estimated that President Maduro would receive 54.6 percent of the vote in its exit poll. This latter exit poll has of course been ignored by the corporate media. According to the Tribune, Edison’s top clients include the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, each of which is a propaganda arm of the U.S. government. The original funder of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is the Central Intelligence Agency.
Are the ballots published online by the Unitary Platform legitimate?
Let us now turn to the ballot records published online by the PUD that the far right coalition claims reveals irregularities in the CNE’s announced vote totals. A Spanish investigative reporter, Román Cuesta, examined the PUD documents from Tinaquillo, a city in the state of Cojedes, which he chose at random. Mr. Cuesta’s results were detailed by Misión Verdad, which describes itself as a consortium of independent researchers. According to Mr. Cuesta, of the 61 documents representing 61 polling stations, 52 were faked. These 52 documents contained “irregularities such as flat signatures, presumably false signatures, incomplete QR codes and the lack of the digital signature code of the voting machine.” Furthermore, Misión Verdad reported, “He also highlighted irregular patterns and signs of forgery in the signatures found, which in several cases look more like a free drawing than a personal signature. Once again, the lack of signatures was present, a serious irregularity in an electoral record that claims to be genuine.”
Mr. Cuesta found that “85% of the records from the municipality of Tinaquillo have problems with signatures, incomplete QR codes and a complete lack of machine codes.” These irregularities are significant, Misión Verdad reports:
“The problem of QR codes and machine codes is especially important since, due to an incomplete QR code, or the absence of codes, said document cannot offer reliable information about a polling station and, consequently, cannot be verified. This gives rise to the presumption of data tampering or editing of the opposition ‘records’, as established by the metadata analysis. If these have been edited and new numbers have been added to favour Edmundo González Urrutia, by eliminating the QR codes and codes from the machine, the information will be unverifiable.”
In reporting on the PUD’s problematic documents, the Spanish online newspaper Diario Red said many opposition documents lack the signatures of witness from the participating parties as well as those of the operators of the machines used in the process, contrary to Venezuela electoral law that these signatures are mandatory (and that any party observers may record any reservations they may have). Furthermore, in “hundreds of cases,” signatures appear to be forgeries, because “the signatures of the members of these electoral tables appeared duplicated and when comparing them, it was evident that the shape of the letters and the movement patterns pointed to a possible forgery” and that stamps and fingerprint scans are often placed on top of signatures, making it impossible to verify them. There are also differences in the spelling of names printed on ballots and how those names were signed.
Questions about the PUD documents had already been raised — the Diario Red report says that “Several opposition parties have already complained that the results of their votes do not match those they posted.” The Diario Red report concludes with a damning summation:
“The opposition’s strategy included several parallel maneuvers, essential for the coup to be successful. One of them was based on the publication of this page full of manipulated minutes, after making the counting process difficult with computer attacks on the Venezuelan electoral bodies, to create the favorable climate inside and outside the country.”
Do analyses of voting trends provide support for the opposition claims?
Two analyses of Venezuelan voting patterns, comparing the turnout and results of the July 28 election with two decades of past voting also raise doubts about the opposition claims. Of course, voting patterns can change and any individual election can result in a change from past elections. But even President Maduro’s total of 52 percent on 6.4 million votes, as announced by the CNE, represents a weaker showing than past presidential elections for the PSUV candidates. Ambassador González polled 43 percent on 5.3 million votes. Only one other candidate reached even 1 percent.
How do these figures comport with Venezuelan voting patterns, as compared to the vote totals asserted by the PUD opposition bloc? A detailed analysis published in Venezuelanalysis, noting President Maduro’s support declining from 68 percent in 2018, asks: “Does this suggest that Maduro’s popularity is waning and that he could not have possibly won the 2024 vote? Not necessarily.” The major opposition bloc boycotted the 2018 election and the resulting abstentions swelled the percentage for the PSUV and resulted in the lowest participation level of any presidential election going back to the late 1990s. For the 2024 election, the 6.4 million votes cast for President Maduro represents a decline from recent presidential elections but is within reasonable range of those results. The lowest total of any election since the 1998 election of Chávez was the 4.4 million votes cast in the 2007 constitutional referendum that the PSUV government lost by two percentage points, on a turnout similar to the 2024 presidential election. Yet the PUD claims that President Maduro won only 3.3 million votes.
Of course, voting totals for an incumbent can decline, sometimes sharply. But is PUD’s paltry total realistic? The Venezuelanalysis analysis finds it is not. “[T]he 6.40 million votes for Maduro’s Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) on July 28 is entirely plausible, while the insane claim of the fictitious U.S.-driven sweep is not at all convincing. On the contrary, the figures show that the only fraud consists of the opposition’s posturing,” the analysis concludes. It should be noted that Venezuelanalysis is consistently an excellent source of information; although it is broadly supportive of the Bolivarian Revolution it also routinely publishes articles critical of the PSUV.
A separate analysis, published by Misión Verdad, also notes that the 3.3 million vote total put forth by the PUD opposition would be wildly out of line with all previous voting patterns. Such a total would represent a dramatic decline in government support despite the fact that a far smaller decline was seen from 2013 to 2018, when Venezuela’s economy, under severe stress due to U.S. sanctions, was in far worse shape. A vote total of 3.3 million would represent “a notably adverse national context or with such a serious negative accumulation that it would have implied the rupture of the cohesion of the Chávista forces and their support base in a deep, generalized and extended way. A party could consolidate its support base only in extraordinary circumstances. The 2018-2024 period has not seen such upheavals.” And although difficulties certainly remain for Venezuelans, for this election, “the exchange rate was stabilized, hyperinflation was stopped, and price increases were minimized,” Misión Verdad writes. Thus, a significant drop in support would be more plausible for 2018 than for this year.
Additionally, the grassroots base of the PSUV remains intact. “There are more than 5 million active militia members, who are fully identified with Chavismo,” Misión Verdad writes. “The PSUV party has an organizational structure of 300 thousand street and community leaders.” Adding “100,000 social and community organizations, parties and movements of various kinds that form a support base,” outside the PSUV (the PSUV technically ran as the largest component of the Great Patriotic Pole), the Misión Verdad analysis estimates a base of at least 6 million, meaning that an implausible half of the engaged Chávista movement would have not voted or voted for the opposition, something that has never come remotely close to happening. Finally, because the PSUV base routinely turns out for presidential elections, while opposition voters are much less consistent, the opposition does better in high-turnout elections. But the July 28 election did not see a high turnout; with 58 percent of eligible voters casting a ballot, it falls in the broad middle of historic turnouts.
It might also be noted that the PUD’s program of dismantling the social advances of the Bolivarian Revolution and selling off the country’s assets, including privatizing the state oil company, are widely disliked, certainly by the Chávista base that hardly could be persuaded to vote for destroying all that has been built over 25 years.
Does Venezuela still have its “best in the world” election system?
Admittedly, that is a subjective question without a definitive answer, but it can be noted that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, then at the helm of the Carter Center, once called the Venezuelan election system “the best in the world.” To support that assessment, the Carter Center said in 2012:
“One of the key aspects of the security control mechanisms involves the construction of an encryption key — a string of characters — created by contributions from the opposition, government, and [National Electoral Council], which is placed on all the machines once the software source-code has been reviewed by all the party experts. The software on the machines cannot then be tampered with unless all three parties join together to ‘open’ the machines and change the software. In addition, each voting system machine has its own individual digital signature that detects if there is any modification to the machine. If the voting count is somehow tampered with despite these security mechanisms, it should be detectable … because of the various manual verification mechanisms.”
Sadly, the Carter Center within a day of the July 28 election, denounced the results, asserting that it “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic.” The Center based this on the CNE’s “failure to announce disaggregated results by polling station,” although Venezuela law allows for 30 days for those results to be published, not one day. The Center asserted that there were “relatively few places of registration” but acknowledged that “Venezuelan citizens turned out peacefully and in large numbers to express their will on election day.”
That is a strong contrast with the report issued by the National Lawyers Guild, an organization of U.S. lawyers who also had observers in Venezuela. On July 29, the Guild said its “delegation observed a transparent, fair voting process with scrupulous attention to legitimacy, access to the polls, and pluralism.” In an August 9 statement, the Guild announced that it “disputes repeated Carter Center press statements” and that the Center has failed to use necessary “care and caution” in its statements. The Carter Center has shifted strongly to the right and now mirrors U.S. government policy. In the August 9 statement, the National Lawyer Guild issued this summary:
“It appears that Carter Center leadership has shifted to the right over the last several years, impacting its overall work in the US and around the world. The Center’s Chief Executive Officer, Paige Alexander, worked for [the United States Agency for International Development] for over 15 years, now called “the new CIA.” She also sits on the southeast chapter board of the widely discredited Anti-Defamation League, which as recently as 2017 advised local police to plant undercover agents in anti-racist organizations in the US. A recent Center for Constitutional Rights report demonstrated how they use counterterrorism laws to target Palestinian solidarity organizers in the U.S., undermining free speech and civil rights. Jennie K. Lincoln, the Center’s senior advisor on Latin America and the Caribbean, is a former consultant with the Organization of American States, from which Venezuela withdrew in 2017 after repeated OAS attempts to undermine Venezuelan democracy and foment instability. Although we recognize that the Carter Center’s Democracy Program is praised for its election monitoring across the world, we are concerned that their funding sources, which include the US State Department, USAID, EU and UK government, make them vulnerable to imperialist political pressure. This may explain the hastiness of the Center in issuing its various statements and paralleling the US news cycle.”
The Guild also took exception with the Center’s statement that voting was peaceful, saying that in the last hours of voting, “violent mobs targeted polling stations across the country to prevent the counting of the voting receipts and the distribution of the tallies” and that the Center “also failed to note the targeted attacks on election observers.” These violent disruptive activities were observed first-hand by its observers, the Guild said. Nor has the Center made any reference to the “violence unleashed by the US-backed opposition,” with attacks on buses, security personnel, a hospital and the murder of two PSUV supporters. It should also be noted that the Agency for International Development is notorious for its political interference in countries around the world.
How does the Venezuelan election system work?
Separate detailed explanations have been published online by Venezuelanalysis and Orinoco Tribune. Here we will briefly summarize these explanations.
According to Venezuelanalysis,voters go to the polls “with their national ID card with their unique ID number, photo, and fingerprint on.” No other identification is needed. Biometric authentication is used to activate voting machines. Votes are stored on the machines in random order to further ensure the integrity of votes. But prior to the actual vote, an extensive process is used to safeguard the vote, Venezuelanalysis writes:
“Venezuela’s entire electoral process has and will go through 16 different audits per process. These audits include auditing of the electoral register, the software, the voting books, the hardware, etc. Each audit is not only presided over by international observers, but also representatives of each participating political party. It is common for representatives from right-wing parties which later criticize the electoral process to make use of their right to send representatives to each audit, signing that they are happy with proceedings at the end.”
After voting on a machine, there is a physical printout that voters can check to confirm their vote was recorded accurately, and the printed receipt is deposited in a box, which can be monitored by any representative, so that results as recorded electronically can be confirmed. The vote itself was witnessed by international observers. The paper printouts are integral to the system, Venezuelanalysis writes:
“Once tally scrutinization on the machine finishes, a random paper ballot audit is announced where the machines to be audited are randomly selected drawing numbers, and the machine’s serial number is recorded. 53% of all voting machines in the country are audited on voting day before totalisation. This audit is public (a citizens audit) meaning that members of the community can come into the voting center to observe and corroborate the process. The audit checks totalisation tallies per candidate between the electronic result and the physical paper receipts in the box which is now opened. … The audit report is signed by election poll staff and observers from each party present, then sealed and handed to the military for delivery to the CNE. Copies of the report are handed over to the representatives of the two highest vote-getters.”
In its report detailing the election process, the Orinoco Tribune noted several steps that are taken, including audits of the machines and their software, and verifications of eligible voters. The system that the Carter Center earlier found excellent continues to be used.
Will foreign support swing behind the election results?
The unrelenting U.S. government campaign against the return of President Maduro to Miraflores Palace — the Biden administration had made it abundantly clear it would not accept any result other than the one it wanted — seems to have had an effect. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, although issuing tepid calls to respect Venezuela’s sovereignty, have called for a re-vote, implying that the results of July 28 should not be recognized. Lula, for whatever reason, seems to have lost his nerve and perhaps has momentarily forgotten the long history of U.S. imperialism and interference in Latin America, including U.S. participation in the 1964 coup that brought a brutal military dictatorship to power in order that the Brazilian economy be oriented toward U.S. goals.
Less surprising is the condemnations issued by Chile President Gabriel Boric, who has steadily moved rightward since winning election on a wave of left and left-center support. President Boric said he refuses to recognize President Maduro’s “self-proclaimed” victory, saying he has “no doubt” there was electoral fraud. That echoes the stances taken by the right-wing heads of state in South America, including Argentina. In response, the president of the Communist Party of Chile, Lautaro Carmona, said his party does recognize President Maduro’s victory. The C.P. of Chile is a part of President Boric’s coalition. The party previously said the international community should “refrain from adopting positions that could foster a climate of confrontation.”
A Misión Verdad commentary speculated that condemning President Maduro is a “lifeline” for President Boric, a lifeline needed because of resistance to his rightward turn from within his coalition and intensified pushback by the congressional opposition with elections scheduled for later this year and in 2025. The Chilean right, like its counterparts elsewhere, has furiously denounced the July 28 election results and has demanded President Boric do so; in addition, the U.S. is Chile’s biggest trade partner.
If there is any one certainty in this affair, it is that the unrelenting hostility of the U.S. government will continue. From the Bush II/Cheney administration’s support for the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez, to the Obama administration’s declaration of Venezuela as a “a national security threat” to the Trump administration’s repeated threats of a military invasion and escalation of sanctions to the Biden administration’s continuation of his predecessor’s policies — all done with inhumane sanctions that in 2018 alone caused 40,000 deaths with an estimated 300,000 people considered “to be at risk because of lack of access to medicines or treatment.” These sanctions, targeting an entire population, are illegal under both U.S. and international law. The United States is able to enforce its sanctions, and force other countries to comply, because of its stranglehold on the world financial system, the linchpin of which is the use of the U.S. dollar for most international transactions.
The U.S. government possesses a power that no country has ever held, not even Britain at the height of its empire. And that government, regardless of which party or what personality is in the White House or in control of Congress, is ruthless in using this power to impose its will. And that government also covets access to Venezuelan oil on its terms, not on Venezuelan terms. We do well to consider the full spectrum of international interests before drawing conclusions about a Global South country, particularly one long the target of lies, sanctions, coup attempts and imperial maneuvers.
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Systemic Disorder 