(Bloomberg) -- With very little international oversight of Venezuela’s upcoming election, a network of citizen witnesses is the opposition party’s best hope of minimizing the risk of vote tampering.
The Unitary Platform — whose Edmundo González is running against President Nicolás Maduro — says it has organized enough volunteers to help observe the count at the country’s roughly 30,000 polling tables on July 28.
The witnesses’ presence “is key to the proper supervision of an election, especially given the recurring flawed practices of the ruling party in Venezuela,” said Jesús Castellanos, a political scientist and former Venezuela electoral authority official now based in Chile. “Witnesses’ actions are essential to guarantee respect for the popular will in this process.”
Venezuelan law has always allowed each party to appoint a witness at each voting table, in each center, but the volunteers have taken on a greater importance given claims of fraud and voter manipulation in recent elections, and an insufficient number of credible international observers this year. Venezuela withdrew the European Union’s invitation to observe the vote. The Carter Center, United Nations and Brazil are sending a few electoral experts — not observers — with very limited responsibilities.
All eyes, both within and outside the country, will be watching for transparency and fairness in the vote.
“We are in an important moment, I think it’s a way to contribute to change,” said María Alejandra, a 29-year-old volunteer witness, whose last name was withheld for safety reasons. The task is a risky one: More than 100 people supporting Machado and González in any way have been arrested this year, according to a recent count by Foro Penal, a nonprofit network of lawyers who provide legal assistance to political prisoners in Venezuela.
Still, María Alejandra remains optimistic, like many Venezuelans who are feeling the fervor from an energized movement led by the opposition’s María Corina Machado. She is currently banned from holding office, so González is running her place.
In late June, the government changed electoral rules to require that people only serve as witnesses at their own designated voting table. But so many Venezuelans were willing to volunteer that the opposition says the law hasn’t stymied its ability to find witnesses for nearly all stations. More than 30% of people surveyed by Caracas-based Delphos in early July said they were willing to stay at voting centers as witnesses, and more than 20% said they were somewhat willing.
“I’m not worried, we are organized, people right now are not afraid,” said María, the volunteer. “It is going to be different.”
On voting day on July 28, the volunteer witnesses, along with polling station staff and some voters, will watch the count. Each staffer and witness must sign a document that states the ballots at each table are valid, and then the electoral authority must upload the numbers from each voting table to their website.
It doesn’t always happen this way. Most recently, the electoral board said 10 million people voted in a referendum over the disputed Essequibo territory with neighbor Guyana, despite reports of empty polling centers. Seven months later, the agency still has not published the table-by-table breakdown of votes.
In recent weeks, the opposition has been hosting virtual trainings for its witnesses. However, eight days before the vote, they say they still haven’t received the required credentials from the electoral authority that would actually allow their witnesses to enter the voting centers. Some trust that they will receive the credentials in the coming week, as in previous electoral processes, but others fear it could happen at the very last minute, to prevent them from distributing the documents to each witness in time.
Venezuelan witnesses face many other challenges, too. Sometimes, they are instead asked to help with other duties if the voting staff is short of people. In some cases, according to previous elections complaints, witnesses have not been allowed inside the center or threatened until they leave. According to Castellanos, this usually happens in small centers that only have one or two voting tables, in places controlled by the government or in remote areas.
And sometimes, claiming fraud goes nowhere. In regional elections in 2017, Andrés Velásquez — who at the time was the opposition’s candidate for governor of Bolívar state — provided proof of vote tampering. Still, the ruling party’s candidate governed until 2021. Velásquez never received an answer to his appeal.
“We guarantee the people of Venezuela that each voting table will be taken care of,” opposition spokesperson Biagio Pilieri said Thursday. “We are going to get the voting minutes, and respect what they say.”
The government did not respond to a request for comment, but at a Friday event said Pilieri’s remarks were part of a plan by the opposition to disavow the results given by the electoral authority, using the copies of their witnesses’ minutes, in order to put pressure on the international community to keep its sanctions policy toward Venezuela.
Meanwhile, most credible polls in early July showed an average 20-point lead in the race by the opposition. The government dismisses such surveys and says Maduro is leading with a similar difference.
For now, 74-year-old former diplomat González remains in the race. Some analysts believe the current conditions will prevail until the date of the vote, discarding previous scenarios in which González would be disqualified, the opposition’s voting card annulled and the election suspended.
“Rain, shine or lightning,” Maduro said Thursday, “there will be elections on July 28.”
--With assistance from Fabiola Zerpa.
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