For the initiative Venezuela Vota and La Hora de Venezuela

“I put it in a little book of the Constitution that I had brought with me and put it in my crotch.”

Between the law and the body: this is how an opposition witness defended the election report at a polling station north of Barquisimeto, in the state of Lara, during the presidential elections of July 28 in Venezuela.

Another lair was found in Caracas: “We put it in our clothes, in our stomachs. Then a large group came to accompany us to where they received the reports,” says a witness from the center in Candelaria, Caracas.

The strategies used by the witnesses of the Venezuelan Command of the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia to draw up the electoral protocols were different. The common fact is that to obtain them they had to fight for several hours with the coordinators of the National Electoral Council (CNE), with the members of the table, with the supporters of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the community councils. . and even with groups.

Venezuela Vota, an alliance of independent media, consulted with 17 witnesses and members of polling stations from the capital district and six states to collect these testimonies.

The order “from above,” according to those interviewed anonymously for this article, was to prevent opposition witnesses from obtaining the paper protocols that are printed by machine after each table has finished voting. Having a protocol is the only guarantee of showing how much each candidate has earned. Historically, it has been difficult for the opposition to reach an agreement to have all the tables filled with witnesses accredited by the parties to produce the protocols and ensure that they are followed. This time, it appears they have learned from their mistakes.

On June 28, for example, no one was alone:

“When they handed it to me, I kept it folded in my pants pocket and left accompanied by neighbors who had come to support us,” says a witness from Vargas.

“I kept the recording with another person until I gave it to the command coordinator with Venezuela at 12 o’clock at night,” says a witness from Barquisimeto.

“We protected them, moving them from person to person until they fell into the hands of someone who would take them to the operations center,” they explain from Lagunillas, Zulia state.

– In my case, since it is a small center, I waited for the election coordinator from [Unidad] He passed me in the parish. “It was my first time voting and my first time at the table,” says a witness from Maiquetia, near the international airport in Vargas state.

In this electoral gymnastics conceived by the opposition, a network of citizen participation was necessary: ​​while the witness sat at the table, doing his job of checking the process and receiving the protocols, outside the circle of other actors, he waited for him to take it to the place where it was scanned and sent to the web repository. “There was a scheme with commanders, managers and trainers who managed the centralized scanning points by the minute, by district. They were transported in motorized vehicles. This process was perfect,” says a member of González Urrutia’s team against Venezuela.

Thanks to this relay, the opposition managed to collect 24,532 minutes, which is 81.32% of the total, which they uploaded to the website “Results with Vzloy”, where anyone anywhere in the world can view them and analyze their authenticity. This was done by independent organizations such as the Colombian Election Observation Mission, data viewers of the Spanish newspaper El País, the Associated Press news agency and curious people.

The consensus at this point is that the protocols have a high level of credibility. This data, open to the world to prove what the opposition believes to be fraud by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, would not have been possible without ensuring that the witnesses’ votes were taken care of.

This is true and it must be respected. We must respect the protests of the people and the decisions of millions. pic.twitter.com/2H3RJhsgry

— Unidad of Venezuela (@unidadvenezuela) July 30, 2024

Hostile Noon as a Method

Although it was already being heard from the moment the centres opened that they were going to deny – by law – the right of party witnesses to receive a certified copy of the minutes, starting at four o’clock in the afternoon, two hours before the centres closed. The threat became louder: “There are no minutes for the opposition here.”

If the witnesses had intended to leave the center, this did not happen.

“At 4 p.m., they told us not to get annoyed that there were no minutes for the opposition. I was sitting at my desk and suddenly the CNE center coordinator told us that if we wanted, we could leave because they weren’t going to give us any minutes. I asked why and she said it was an order from above,” says a witness from Vargas, a traditional Chavista state where Edmundo González won 61% of the vote and Maduro 36%. Pressed, he left the center with his report.

“I was told that in the previous elections they gave [las actas]but not now. But they gave it to me because I was standing there. “I said it was an electoral crime,” says a witness from Tamaka parish in Barquisimeto, a former ruling party stronghold where the supply of water and cooking gas is managed by ruling party groups and leaders.

Although opposition leader María Corina Machado said at a rally on August 3 that they had a protocol thanks to witnesses from the Command with Venezuela, the Plan República and the CNE, in several centers there is evidence of a maneuver by PSUV witnesses, Plan República officials and members of the polling stations linked to the ruling party to throw opposition witnesses out of the polling stations.

In Vargas, a witness says that in 30 years of participating in election days, she has never seen such a level of intimidation: “Getting the protocols was a real, serious struggle. With the CNE coordinator, with the PSUV witnesses, with the Republican Plan officials who supported everything the CNE coordinator said.

In response to the witnesses’ decision, state security forces carried out arbitrary arrests and detentions of witnesses in Caracas and other cities.

#Attention #ElectoralUpdate I receive many complaints from witnesses who are being threatened. There is no point in intimidating, the brave Venezuelans who were witnesses and participants at the table have already handed over the protocol to the campaign command, that’s all…

— Delsa Solorzano (@delsasolorzano) July 31, 2024

It took Chavismo some time to react to the opposition’s opportunity to show the world raw minutes, each with its own unique “digital fingerprint.”

Five days after the election, Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly (AN) and head of Maduro’s campaign, questioned the legitimacy of the protocol published by the opposition. At a press conference, he presented photographs of allegedly mutilated or incomplete protocols. Their arguments were taken apart by social media users, who showed the original protocols. Six days after the election, Diosdado Cabello, a PSUV deputy, also announced that he would air a special edition of his program Con el Mallet dedicated to the protocol of the “coup opposition.”

Hi dear! Do you know what’s so good about open data and FREE knowledge (what you defended before)? I just found THIS POST (even though you deleted it, some of us know how to use GIMP), it’s the Alejandro Humboldt Center, San José de Valencia Parish, and as you can see, IT’S A LIE! https://t.co/G32O5B60QT pic.twitter.com/tkRPByd1aw

— Jesus Lara (@phenobarbital) August 3, 2024

Another report listed only one group of candidates and no others, with several parties missing from Nicolás Maduro’s votes. “It’s pure garbage,” said Jorge Rodríguez. pic.twitter.com/IxJLTOVnbB

— Luigino Bracci Roa (@lubrio) August 2, 2024

Meanwhile, the CNE has not published the figures by center, region or candidate – the organization’s website has been down since the Monday after the election – and Nicolás Maduro’s campaign team has not shown the election protocols that were provided to them by their own witnesses. The Plan de la República, the military guarantors of the security of the electoral process, also has the protocols. But only the opposition has shown them.