A 2007 mural in Caracas depicting "Uncle Sam," the figurative snake of imperialism. Photo: Mario Tama.
By Gloria Guillo – Dec 9, 2025
Every voting tech hack that Washington claims was “invented in Venezuela” was discovered, demonstrated, and documented in the United States years — sometimes decades —before Smartmatic even existed. Full Stop.
With President Trump’s false narco-trafficking claim boomeranging back and re-exposing the U.S. governments longstanding involvement through its military and CIA in cocaine and heroin trade, its state department is running out of excuses that justify stealing Venezuela’s crude oil to prevent higher prices that could result in the dreaded 1973 event of “dropping trucks off the road.”
Consider that while the U.S. has plenty of oil, it’s short 1.5–2 million barrels per day of heavy crude. Heavy crude keeps diesel production (and thus trucking/freight costs) at optimum levels.
That’s exactly why Venezuelan heavy oil — when sanctions allow — is highly valued: every 200,000–300,000 b/d from Venezuela directly plugs part of that diesel-critical gap at the lowest cost.
Latest Tale to Justify War on Venezuela
So, first, war on Venezuela was to promote “democracy”—when that narrative flopped along with Juan Guaido—it became drug trafficking, and now it’s using longstanding U.S. election woes to justify “taking” Venezuela’s crude oil, like Trump admitted to doing in Syria. This latest ruse is more pathetic than an unprepared sixth grader blaming the family dog for “eating his homework.”
The longstanding lack of U.S. voting equipment integrity is provable in court, reproducible in any high-school computer lab, and archived in publicly available files that have sat untouched on BlackBoxVoting.org since 2003.
The proof was produced by Bev Harris, a grandmother, from Renton, Washington, more than twenty years ago.
Below is the side-by-side timeline that no intelligence briefer, no Trump lawyer, and no prime-time host has ever dared put on screen—because once you see it, the Venezuelan election-theft myth collapses like a house of cards in a hurricane.
The Timeline: CIA Myth vs. Bev Harris Reality
Year
CIA / Berntsen / Powell / Lindell Claim (Venezuela did it)
Bev Harris / Black Box Voting Reality (USA did it first — with receipts)
2000
Hugo Chávez is still consolidating power
Florida punch-card crisis: 175,000 undervotes decide the presidency. ES&S machines already subtracting votes in real time (Allegheny County, PA)
2002
Chávez “beginning to plan fraud software”
Harris discovers “rob-georgia.zip” on Diebold servers — a patch that overwrites vote databases. Two years before the Venezuelan recall referendum
Jan 2003
Smartmatic doesn’t even have a Venezuelan contract yet
Harris downloads 40,000 unrestricted Diebold files, including full GEMS source code. Johns Hopkins & Rice confirm buffer overflows and remote access
Aug 2004
Chávez supposedly “steals” recall referendum → orders secret fraud code
Harris’s book Black Box Voting is published documenting 100+ U.S. miscounts using the exact same GEMS code Washington later blames on Caracas
Dec 2005
Venezuela “perfecting the memory-card hacks”
Harris films the Leon County, Florida hack for HBO: 7-1 vote flip in eight minutes using only a $20 memory card on a Diebold AccuVote-TS
2006
Smartmatic still running tiny pilots in Venezuela
HBO’s Hacking Democracy airs to 20 million Americans showing every trick the Washington later attributes to Chávez
2016
“Venezuelans invent Fraction Magic”
Harris releases 8-part Fraction Magic report + live video using only U.S.-made GEMS 1.18.19 — votes split to the thousandth and moved invisibly across precincts
2017
Venezuela drops Smartmatic after the company refuses to disable audits
Smartmatic publicly accuses the Maduro regime of manipulating results — the exact opposite of the CIA story
2020
“Venezuela flips Georgia, Arizona, Michigan”
Georgia hand-recounts 5 million paper ballots — machine tally within 0.1 %. No foreign code ever found
2023
“Venezuelan code still inside Dominion”
Delaware Superior Court rules the claim false on its face. Fox pays $787 million. Smartmatic lawsuits ongoing
2024–2025
Berntsen promises “source code proof” to DOJ
Zero lines of code produced. DOJ quietly shelves case after internal review
Unmasking Imperial Hypocrisy: Trump’s 2025 Venezuela Escalation Is a Sham for Oil
The Mechanisms Themselves — All Born in the USA
1 Fractional Vote Weighting CIA: “Invented in Caracas to steal elections invisibly.” Harris: Demonstrated in 2003 Diebold source code (publicly posted). GEMS field labeled “Weighted Race” lets one voter’s ballot count as 0.10, 1.00, or 10.00 depending on precinct. Feature existed since at least 1998.
2 Real-Time Database Overwriting CIA: “Venezuelan backdoor.” Harris: 2002 “rob-georgia.zip” patch and 2003 GEMS duplicate-database feature — both archived and downloadable since Harris’s leak.
3 Memory-Card Swaps CIA: “Venezuelan engineers perfected this.” Harris: Filmed in Leon County, Florida, December 2005 — eight-minute hack on live machine.
4 Central Tabulator Remote Access CIA: “Huawei and Serbian servers.” Harris: 2003 Diebold files show default modem passwords and open ports. No foreign hardware required.
The Companies — All American When the Flaws Were Created
• Diebold (now Premier) — Canton, Ohio
• ES&S — Omaha, Nebraska
• Sequoia — Oakland, California (sold to Smartmatic in 2005 after the vulnerabilities were already in the code)
• Dominion — founded in Canada in 2003, bought Sequoia in 2010 with no Smartmatic code transfer (confirmed in multiple lawsuits)
Smartmatic’s only U.S. appearance was a single 2006 Chicago pilot with 100 machines. It has never been used in a swing state.
The Paper Trail That Kills the Myth
The single most devastating document is the 2016 Fraction Magic report by Bev Harris and Bennie Smith. It is 80 pages of screenshots, flowcharts, and live video using only software that was sold in the United States from 1998 to 2008.
No Venezuelan engineer is mentioned, because none was needed. The report was sent to every secretary of state, every major news outlet, and every member of Congress. None of them disputed the findings—because they were reproducible on American hardware in American counties.
The Fixes That Already Exist — and Are Being Ignored
While the CIA chases ghosts in Caracas, Harris handed America the solutions twenty years ago:
- Ballot Images (mandated by federal law since HAVA 2002) — release them publicly and any citizen can verify the count. Colorado and Rhode Island do it; no “Venezuelan interference” has ever been found.
- Risk-Limiting Audits — statistically prove the outcome matches the paper.
- Open-Source Code Review — let the public see what is running on the machines.
The Verdict from the Courts and the Auditors
- 2020–2023 hand recounts in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan: paper ballots matched machine totals within statistical norms.
- No forensic audit has ever found foreign code.
- Dominion and Smartmatic have collectively won or settled defamation cases for over $2.4 billion because the claim is provably false.
Conclusion: The Lie Was Never About Protecting Elections
The Venezuelan election-theft myth is not an intelligence failure.
It is a deliberate, sustained disinformation operation whose only purpose is to provide moral cover for economic strangulation of a country that nationalized its oil.
Bev Harris proved — with files, videos, and court victories — that every single trick blamed on Caracas was born in Ohio, Nebraska, and Florida.
The machines are vulnerable because American vendors wrote secret code and American
regulators looked the other way — not because Hugo Chávez had a secret lab in a basement in Miraflores.
Conclusion
Until the United States mandates the transparency Harris has been begging for since 2003, the real threat to American elections will remain exactly where she found it: inside the black boxes built and serviced by American corporations.
If former President George W. Bush’s comedy routine at the 2004 White House Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner about his inability to find weapons of mass destruction didn’t result in the death of millions of people and the obliteration of the cradle of civilization, it would be funny.
Let’s not have Trump recreating Bush’s war crime folly regarding his inability to find drugs and election stealing technology in Venezuela at our expense too.
Gloria Guillo
Gloria Guillo, MPA is an investigative journalist, former Public Administrator and singer, songwriter. She co-hosts Uncontrolled Opposition with Jeremy Kuzmarov.  Gloria can be reached at un.ops@icloud.com
