Venezuela’s CNE Still Mum on Detailed Election Results
over 50 days after the July 28th presidential election
HAVANA TIMES – More than 50 days after the presidential election in Venezuela, and amid various political events in the meantime, the National Electoral Council (CNE) has yet to publish detailed results from the July 28 election, leaving unresolved doubts about what the vast majority of Venezuelans witnessed that day.
In the early hours of Monday, July 29, CNE President Elvis Amoroso announced that, according to their projections, Nicolas Maduro had secured re-election with 51.2% of the votes, compared to candidate Edmundo González Urrutia’s 44.2%.
Meanwhile by July 30, the opposition coalition led by Maria Corina Machado and candidate Edmundo Gonzalez had published over 80% of their official copies of the voting machine tally sheets obtained by poll workers and watchers. That detailed information is still accessible at https://resultadosconvzla.com/ and it shows Gonzalez with 67% of the votes to only 30% for Maduro.
On Friday, August 2, the electoral body issued a second bulletin, claiming that with almost 97% of the votes counted Maduro had obtained 51.95% (6,408,844 votes) compared to 43.18% (5,326,104 votes) for Gonzalez. However, the CNE has yet to present the supporting evidence for these numbers, such as the official tally sheets they have had since the night of the election or the detailed results broken down by voting centers, tables, and regions.
“The CNE still hasn’t published the Electoral Gazette, nor has it officially released the results of the 30,206 automated tally sheets from July 28. It also hasn’t outlined how to carry out the post-election audits that were suspended. The president of the National Assembly claims that the CNE published the results in the Electoral Gazette, but unfortunately, this cannot be verified because the organization’s website remains down,” said electoral affairs journalist Eugenio Martínez.
Martinez, director of Votoscopio, explained in an interview with CNN that “the data published by the CNE is not auditable, as they only provide general participation and candidate numbers, but not the detailed data or the database to understand how the final calculation was reached.”
Did the CNE Violate Electoral Law?
The NGO Acceso a la Justicia asserts that the CNE failed to adhere to its legal obligation to publish detailed election results.
Article 155 of the Law of Electoral Processes mandates that the CNE must order the publication of presidential election results in the Electoral Gazette within 30 days of proclaiming the elected candidates. However, the CNE is still overdue in this obligation.
“The first results were announced in the early hours of the day following the vote. However, in this instance, CNE President Elvis Amoroso claimed that with 80% of the votes counted and with a ‘decisive and irreversible’ trend, Nicolas Maduro had won with 51.2% against 44.2%. This statement raises concerns from a mathematical perspective since 20% of the votes still remained to be counted, representing over 2 million votes,” Acceso a la Justicia noted in its review of the electoral process.
Since the initial results were released in the early morning of July 29 and later that same week, neither the CNE nor its president have provided further data. This is despite Article 146 of the Electoral Law, which grants a maximum of 48 hours to release the final results. As of now, the partial results have not been posted on the CNE website, nor have they been disclosed by state, municipality, or voting center, in violation of articles 146 and 150 of the Electoral Law and regulation 383.
Martinez said, “there are many irregularities in the behavior of the CNE.” He notes that “two essential post-election audits that validate the results and are part of the election organization schedule have not been conducted.”
Proclamation Null and Void
Due to the delays by the electoral body, many legal experts argue that the CNE’s proclamation of Nicolas Maduro as re-elected president lacks legitimacy and is null and void.
Constitutional lawyer Jose Ignacio Hernandez explained that, from a constitutional standpoint, the CNE has not proclaimed Maduro, and the deadline to do so has expired.
“The legal deadline of forty-eight hours to finalize the results expired at 6 PM on July 30, 2024, without the CNE having completed the final tally, which requires an official tally sheet or final bulletin. In fact, by that time, the CNE had not published any electoral result, neither the initial nor the final bulletin. There is no public record of any electoral data, despite the deadline for tallying all these votes having passed,” said Hernandez.
Hernandez argues that the result of this situation is a constitutional vacuum since there is no elected president as stipulated by Article 228 of the Constitution. According to this article, “the candidate who has obtained the majority of valid votes shall be proclaimed elected.” However, since the legal deadline has passed, no electoral records certify that Maduro obtained the majority of the votes.
First published in Spanish by Efecto Cocuyo and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.