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<h1 class="title">Capriles Falsifies Evidence in Order to Claim Fraud
in Venezuela’s Elections</h1>
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<p>Maracaibo, April 17<sup>th</sup>, 2013 (Venezuelanalysis.com) –
Opposition leader Henrique Capriles has given falsified evidence to
support his claims that there was fraud in Venezuela’s presidential
elections on Sunday.</p>
<p>At a press conference on Tuesday, the opposition candidate listed
several examples that he claimed were evidence of “irregularities” in
the electoral process and in the vote count, and presented a series of <a
href="http://venezuelasomostodos.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Incidencias-del-proceso-electoral-14A.pdf">slides</a>
to national and international media.</p>
<p>However, several of the examples given by Capriles as evidence of
fraud are clearly false, as can be seen by consulting the results on
the National Electoral Council’s (CNE) <a href="http://www.cne.gov.ve">website</a>.</p>
<p>As one example, Capriles listed three separate voting centers in
which he claimed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro had gotten much
higher results than Hugo Chavez had gotten in the previous presidential
elections.</p>
<p>Capriles claimed that this was implausible, since overall Maduro did
not get as many total votes as Chavez.</p>
<p>“In one voting center in Yaracuy, Maduro got 1000 percent more votes
than Chavez did. How can anyone believe that?” he said.</p>
<p>However, the results from last year’s election show that the three
voting centers that Capriles gave as examples were cases in which all
the votes from that center had not yet been registered in 2012’s
results when the election was called for Chavez, leading to an
extremely low vote count from those centers for both candidates.</p>
<p>In the Yaracuy <a
href="http://www.cne.gob.ve/resultado_presidencial_2012/pp/0/reg_201402017.html">voting
center</a>, for example, a total of only 9 votes out of 75 were
registered in 2012’s elections, 7 for Hugo Chavez and 2 votes for
Henrique Capriles.</p>
<p>However, on Sunday all the votes from <a
href="http://www.cne.gob.ve/resultado_presidencial_2013/pp/0/reg_201402017.html">this
center</a> were registered before the election was called, leading to
73 votes for Nicolas Maduro, and only 6 votes for Henrique Capriles.</p>
<p>The same situation can be seen for the examples Capriles gave in
Merida (<a
href="http://www.cne.gob.ve/resultado_presidencial_2012/pp/3/reg_120201010.html">2012</a>
vs. <a
href="http://www.cne.gob.ve/resultado_presidencial_2013/pp/3/reg_120201010.html">2013</a>),
and Nueva Esparta (<a
href="http://www.cne.gob.ve/resultado_presidencial_2012/pp/12/reg_150901015.html">2012</a>
vs. <a
href="http://www.cne.gob.ve/resultado_presidencial_2013/pp/12/reg_150901015.html">2013</a>),
centers at which there was a very low vote count in 2012.</p>
<p>Given the unusually low vote count in these centers in 2012, the
votes for both candidates drastically increases when 2013’s results are
compared to 2012.</p>
<p>In the Merida voting center, for example, votes for Capriles also
increased by nearly 1000 percent, and were also much higher than the
number of votes for Chavez from that center in 2012.</p>
<p>Other examples given by Capriles were also fabricated by
manipulating the numbers of different vote tallies.</p>
<p>Capriles claimed that in some cases there were more votes than total
voters registered at that voting center. However, the only example
provided by Capriles is also false.</p>
<p>Capriles said that at a voting center in the state of Trujillo the
number of voters for this center was 536, but that a total of 717 votes
were tallied. However, <a
href="http://www.cne.gob.ve/resultado_presidencial_2013/lvg/115/reg_190303002021.html">CNE’s
results</a> for this voting center show only 369 votes were tallied,
not 717.</p>
<p>Communications Minister Ernesto Villegas explained during a press
conference last night that Capriles had erroneously added together the
votes from two separate voting tables, but was using the voter rolls
from only one of the two tables.</p>
<p>To counter Capriles claims, government officials have pledged to
publish online at the <a href="http://www.psuv.org.ve/">PSUV’s website</a>
all of the actual vote tallies from the thousands of voting centers
around the country so that the public can see that the official results
line up with the individual vote tallies.</p>
<p>Electoral witnesses from the Capriles campaign presumably signed off
on all of the vote tallies, as they would have been present at the
voting centers at the closing of the polls on Sunday.</p>
<p>The nature of Venezuela’s electoral system makes the kind of fraud
alleged by Capriles nearly impossible. Witnesses from both sides are
present at every voting center around the country, and a random hot
audit of 54 percent of the votes is conducted at all of the centers in
the presence of all witnesses immediately after the polls close.</p>
<p>The paper receipts that each voter deposits in a sealed box are
counted to assure that they line up with the tally from the voting
machines, and all witnesses sign the tallies to certify that they
witnessed the audit.</p>
<p>However, Capriles claimed yesterday that his witnesses were forcibly
ejected, often at gunpoint, from nearly 300 voting centers around the
country on Sunday.</p>
<p>No evidence was provided for this claim, and no independent reports
of this happening were registered by any major media outlets on the day
of the elections.</p>
<p>Pro-Chavez political commentator Mario Silva responded to the claim
last night by questioning how this could have happened without anyone
noticing.</p>
<p>“Do you really believe that hundreds of witnesses could be forcibly
removed from the voting centers without anyone saying anything? Why
haven’t any of those witnesses made a denunciation or talked to the
media?” he said.</p>
<p>Capriles has pledged to turn over all of his “evidence” of fraud to
the National Electoral Council for review, and pledges to continue to
demand a recount, or that the election be annulled.</p>
<p>The government has reported that 7 people have been killed so far in
the violence that erupted around the country after Capriles claimed the
elections were fraudulent. <br>
</p>
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