People vote at a polling station during a voting drill in Caracas on June 30, 2024. - Venezuela held on Sunday a rehearsal for the July 28 presidential elections, in which President Nicolas Maduro will seek a new term. Photo: Federico Parra/AFP.
Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—The president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, from the Andrés Bello high school in Caracas, congratulated the Venezuelans who participated in this Sunday’s voting drill and counted with a massive participation of voters supporting the different candidates. It is noteworthy that neither far-right politicians Maria Corina Machado or Edmundo Gonzalez participated in the drill, something that aligns with their subversive agenda of not recognizing the electoral authority.
Through a television broadcast on VTV, Amoroso said that everything related to the technical and logistical aspects went perfectly during the process. “Thanks to the people of Venezuela and the CNE technicians who did everything possible so that in all the municipalities of the country there was an electoral machine so that the citizens could exercise their will and sovereignty,” he added.
“We are completely sure that this electoral process that began this Sunday will culminate successfully on July 28,” he said while thanking the entire population for their participation and “commitment to the country.” He added, “Have no doubt that there will be elections here on July 28 with the great participation that was demonstrated today.”
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Since 2012, the CNE has organized voting drills with the purpose of allowing the electorate to become familiar with the voting machines and for the CNE to verify the mechanisms and processes that will be used for the elections. The voters will also be able to see the electoral ballot with the names of all the candidates as well as to verify the operation of the automated voting system.
The voting drill, initially scheduled to finalize at 6 pm was extended until 7 pm to guarantee the participation of citizens, added Amoroso while noting that the decision was taken due to the massive attendance at the voting centers in the country. He noted that if at, 7 pm there is still a queue of voters in some electoral centers, the process will be extended to ensure maximum participation.
The CNE’s Vice President, Carlos Quintero, also said that the day has served to corroborate the fulfillment of the objectives set by the CNE. “The day has served as preparation for what will be the process on July 28,” he said.
One of the objectives is to test the entire voting system such as the counting and authentication processes, the processing times and to test the voting times.
“We can say that there is a satisfactory average of voting time for voters and voters between 38 and 42 seconds, which is important because it highlights the technical effort made so that voters have quality service at the polling stations and there is a good flow in the queues,” he added.
The drill also served to test voting centres, the network infrastructure for transmitting data, and the security mechanisms that protect the voters privacy. He added the importance of testing “all the protocols in the field, of all the organizations that work together with the Electoral Power, such as CANTV, Movilnet, Pdvsa, Ministry of Education, Ministry of the Interior and CEOFANB, which have demonstrated today the coordination and compliance with the protocols that have been worked on to resolve the incidents at the time that they occur in the field when a machine fails.”
Candidates participation
From the Santa Teresa parish in Caracas, President and incumbent candidate Nicolás Maduro welcomed the participation of the Venezuelan people in the voting drill. “How beautiful the people of all Venezuela are, they are mobilized everywhere in the voting centers,”the president wrote on social media along with a video where he was seen greeting the population that was queuing to cast their vote during the drill.
The opposition presidential candidate for the Centrados party, Enrique Márquez, highlighted the enthusiasm of the people during the drill after participating in it. “It is a very energetic process at the voting center, a lot of enthusiasm from the people. The process is very fast, it only takes a few seconds to vote,” said Márquez, as reported by the AVN news agency. Marquez is the candidate that along far-right, Unitary Platform (MUD) party, Edmundo Gonzalez, did not signed the CNE agreement to reject violence during and after the presidential elections.
Another opposition candidate that participated in the drill was Luis Eduardo Martínez. Speaking to the media from Maracay, Aragua state, Martínez said that he was able to verify that the electoral schedule is advancing as planned. “We have evaluated the progress of the electoral process and were able to verify yesterday that the electoral schedule has been met exactly [as planned]: the audits and each of the steps have been activated,” he said.
He added that, “we are at step number 75, which guarantees that the 2024 presidential elections will be held on July 28 without any problems.” He made the statement after voting in the Octavio Hernández Educational Unit voting center, located in the Lucía parish of the Maracaibo municipality in Zulia state.
Benjamín Rausseo, another opposition presidential candidate highlighted the importance of the voting drill. “This initiative must be supported. It must be made clear that from now on, the president who emerges from these elections will govern for all Venezuelans, the new Venezuela that wants to rediscover itself,” he said.
Likewise, he remarked the importance of citizen participation. “We must participate so that we can turn the page. Venezuelans must meet again in the future to build the new homeland, we all fit here,” he added while explaining that he felt very happy with the process and with the ease with which the vote was carried out. “I am happy. I was very excited when I saw myself on the card. “We are satisfied with how the system worked,” said Rausseo, highlighting that there are multiple options.
Surprisingly the PUD main politicians, Maria Corina Machado and presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, did participate in the voting drill despite their multiple denunciations that the government sabotaged them with a bad location in the electoral ballot. The voting drill was an opportunity to educate voters on where to should locate their candidate in the electoral ballot, but the PUD did not take the opportunity to benefit from this. The only major PUD opposition figure that openly participated in the drill was Henrique Capriles.
Photo gallery
The voting drill in Venezuela in recent years has been an activity that the ruling party, United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), has taken advantage of to also measure the strength of its electoral organization. For this reason many opposition figures in social media platforms warned about the “alarming” number of voters participating in the voting drill, something that does not correspond to their narrative of an “easy victory” against President Maduro in the upcoming elections.
Many voting drill participants complained about the long queues for voting in this Sunday’s drill. However, the CNE explained in several occasions that the number of voting machines during the drill was lower than what will be deployed for the real election.
Orinoco Tribune collected images of the voting drill from different social media accounts and from far-right news outlet Efecto Cocuyo:
Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff
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