VENEZUELA: They hand-count 55% of the electronic vote!!!!

[Peace Patriot]

(great first-hand account of Venezuela's election--which Hugo Chavez won by over 60% of the vote...)

DIARY OF A VENEZEUALAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: December 3rd 2006

By: Chesa Boudin – Red Pepper Venezuela Blog

Loud fireworks woke me, and much of Caracas, up at 2.30am on the morning of the election. Luckily I had planned on getting out of the house by 3am anyway. By 4am I was in the heart of one of the largest barrios in Caracas called El Valle. My friends from El Valle had insisted that I show up “the earlier the better” to see the election and that  3am was a good time to arrive. Since Venezuela is notoriously behind schedule, and I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to show up 4 hours before polling stations even opened, I hadn’t taken them too seriously.

But sure enough when I arrived at 4am there was already a line of over a hundred people waiting to be some of the first to cast their ballot in the 2006 presidential election.

(snip)

In addition to the lines, there were groups of motorcycles racing around, lighting rockets and M80s --the poor people equivalent of fireworks-- to get stragglers out of bed and energised. Caravans of motorcycles and cars packed with red clad, flag waving barrio dwellers passed with horns blaring and a range of chants emanating: “Uh ah, Chavez no se va” (uh ah, Chavez isn’t going anywhere)...(and)....“No volverán” (they (the oligarchy) will not return).

(snip)

Around 6am, the sun began to peek over the steep hills of the barrio, and street vendors began selling soup, coffee, and arepas (a Venezuelan staple made from cornmeal). I was invited to watch one of the neighborhood polling stations set up with state of the art electronic machines. Each machine in addition to recording digital votes, printed paper receipts that were then to be deposited in ballot boxes for physical confirmation of the electronic results. Given that this was a new system, 55 percent of the polling stations were expected to do manual counts of the paper ballots to verify the electronic results. As the electoral council’s local employees set up the polling station in a local school, several members of the National Guard were on hand to ensure security. Witnesses from several different political parties were on hand to observe. International media and the countless delegations of international observers had unrestricted access to observe first hand. Everyone wanted this election to be fair, all the safeguards against voter fraud in place.

By 7am there were drum circles (tambores), and trumpets blaring. The queue for the biggest polling station in the neighborhood, where about 6,000 people were expected to vote, was 6 blocks long, five people deep. Even once the polling stations were open and operating (more or less) efficiently, the lines continued to grow. As I circulated in and out of various polling centers in the neighborhood, I was surprised by the relative efficiency of the process given Venezuela’s penchant for making everything take about twice as long as necessary.

(MORE)

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1901

For other news of the Venezuelan election, see: Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Sat. Dec. 9, 2006, posted by livvy
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x462043, and
more at: www.venezuelanalysis.com

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NOTE FROM PEACE PATRIOT: I wonder why our oiligarchy never even considered hand-counting 55% of the vote in our new and untested electronic voting systems, run on "trade secret," proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by corporations with very close ties to the Bush regime and far rightwing causes--and, in fact, went out of their way to prevent any possibility of a hand-count, by installing paperless electronic voting machines that CANNOT BE AUDITED in one third of the country, with NO AUDIT, or a mere 1% audit (highly manipulable) in the electronic systems with some kind of paper trail. Could it have been to keep the oiligarchy in power, and to extend their murderous, war profiteering hogpen corporate resource war for another several years? That's my opinion of it: deliberate criminal non-transparency, so they can go on killing people for their oil, and robbing us of billions and billions and billions of dollars in no-bid military contracts and other boodle.

Transparent elections = good leftist government, of, by and for the people.

Non-transparent elections = bad fascist government, of, by and for the super-rich.

I salute Venezuelans, for figuring that one out--and I hope that we learn from their example, up here in "the land of the free, and the home of the brave."

[flyarm]

1. thanks for article..we have kids dying for that vote..and yet we are

told trade secrets count more than the transparency of our democracy!! what a filthy mis justice being perpetrated on the American people ..who only think they have a representative democracy!!

I was involved in a case here in NJ after election..and when the assist attorney general told the judge the codes were proprietary..the judge said ..well you know this vote count is wrong..when she ( asst state attorney general said they needed to get the count done by nov 17th for certification)

the judge said ..well you know the counts are wrong..how can you certify a wrong vote count??

The state attorney general said..well the codes to machines and the machine software software is proprietary...and the judge said well just check the machines...

we all knew, and it was stated in court, the state knew the problem was not the machines but the software and the codes in the machines...

ahhhhhhhhhhhh..but people still believe their votes get counted..and they still believe they have representative government ..right????????

fly

[Vidar]

2. Democracy lives in Venezuela. Too bad about the US.

[antiimperialist]

3. The quickness of the results was remarkable

5 hours after the polls closed 78% of the votes had already been counted and the results released to the public.