Jorge Rodríguez Provides Evidence of Electoral Fraud in Venezuela's Opposition Primaries

Venezuelan National Assembly (AN) President and PSUV Deputy Jorge Rodríguez presented evidence “of the many that exist” to prove a “huge” fraud perpetrated by the extreme right in the opposition primaries held on Sunday.

This Tuesday, October 24, Rodríguez revealed details that discredit the turnout figures announced by the National Primary Commission (CNP) after the opposition elections on October 22.

He explained that they “merged what was already merged” a day before the election and set an average. “The number of voters for each voting center, a little over 3,000 centers, had to total 11,000 voters each. That guaranteed a crowd of people to take the photo and present the farce.”

“The same ones who violated the Constitution and staged a pantomime to blockade us, now with a different makeup, launched the second self-proclamation through a gigantic electoral farce and scam,” Rodríguez said. He pointed to three details that guaranteed the fraud in the opposition’s primary elections:

• Voters were unaware of the existence of an electoral registry and voting center.
• One day before the elections, the previously merged voting centers changed.
• The company in charge of these elections, Súmate, has an extensive history of scams.

Rodríguez said that Súmate was the group that organized the electoral fraud. “No one knew if it was their turn to vote or where it was their turn because a company that belongs to Mrs. María Corina Machado, called Súmate, was who organized the electoral farce. The electoral principle, “one election, one vote,” was not safeguarded.

In this sense, Rodríguez stated that Machado’s Súmate has a history of electoral scams in Venezuela. “They care about pantomime to return to self-proclamation and violence,” he added.

“They said that two million people participated, but [in reality] 598,350 voted… To this day, they cannot find a way to count the supposed votes,” Rodríguez said.

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“There is no way to verify the primaries. It was not an election. Now, it is explained why the CNP did not accept technical support from the National Electoral Council (CNE). What happened was a scam, a farce. An election has several characteristics that must be respected for it to be verifiable, fair, and free,” he said.

Deputy Rodríguez indicated that the necessary investigations will be carried out due to the obvious fraud in the Venezuelan opposition’s primary elections. In addition, they will confirm the illegal use of the identities of more than two million Venezuelans. “The use of Venezuelans’ identities, without authorization or consent, is a crime and theft of will, as there is no way to sustain that number.”

To this end, he asked Vice President of the AN Pedro Infantes to consider the possibility of forming a special commission to investigate Sunday’s events.

Rodríguez pointed out that “as we already knew, they were coming up with the farce. We [the PSUV] put one person in each voting center to count the votes individually. The installed capacity [set by the CNP] did not reach one million voters.”

He said that everyone can and should scrutinize to verify that this happened and corroborate that the recorded result corresponds to the votes.

Principles of an election were not fulfilled
Deputy and AN President Rodríguez asserted that the universal principle of elections was not guaranteed. That is, “one voter – one vote.” Who is going to vote is determined through indelible ink or fingerprint readers.

He stated, “If it is demonstrated that people voted on several occasions in an election, that completely annuls it.”

Rodríguez explained that Venezuela has the fastest, most efficient, and most automated electoral system, with an average voting time of two minutes. Thus, it is impossible for votes to have been carried out in one minute, particularly in a manual process with just 25% of regular voting centers opened.

He stated that any Venezuelan has the right to challenge an event with these features if they believe their identity was stolen to carry out fraud.

Below is the evidence presented by AN President Jorge Rodríguez, revealing fraud in the opposition primaries.