CARACAS – There is no evidence that Venezuela’s electoral system was the target
of a cyber-attack during elections held last month, the head of the Carter Centre’s observation mission told AFP, confirming figures that gave the opposition candidate a victory.

On election night, the president of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, declared president Nicolas Maduro the winner, without providing data from polling stations,
stating that the CNE had been the victim of a computer attack.

“We have no evidence of that whatsoever,”
Jennie Lincoln, head of the Carter Centre delegation that was invited to monitor the Venezuela election, told AFP. The CNE has not published detailed results from the vote, and claims the delay is due to a hack, while Maduro has denounced what he calls a “criminal cyber-fascist coup d’etat”.

“There are companies that monitor and know
when there is a denial of service, that there was no denial of service in Venezuela on election day or election night,” Lincoln said, speaking from Atlanta, Georgia where the centre is located.

Meanwhile, transmission of voting data “is done over telephone lines and satellite phones. So, that’s not even done with the computer,” she said.

Opponents and many observers believe the delay is meant to help avoid giving actual results that would show opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia won the vote. The CNE ratified Maduro’s victory last Friday with 52% of the vote, still without making public the polling station numbers.

Meanwhile, the opposition has uploaded voting records onto a website, which it claims show that Gonzalez Urrutia won with 67%.

“Even though the playing field was very uneven, the Venezuelan people went to vote. The big irregularity of the election day was the lack of transparency of the CNE, and the blatant disregard for their rules of the game in terms of producing the true vote of the Venezuelan people,” she said.

The centre “ran the same numbers” from the available data that the opposition used, and along with other organisations and universities, confirmed Gonzalez as the winner with more than 60% of the vote.

Maduro and Jorge Rodriguez, his close aide who is Venezuela’s National Assembly president, have claimed the figures are false, with Rodriguez even showing documents that he says prove so.

“I think that was theatre,” Lincoln said.

Multiple countries, including the United States and several Latin American nations, have recognised Gonzalez Urrutia as the winner, and have called on Venezuela to publish election data.

Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, who have maintained good relations with Maduro’s government, urged an “impartial verification” of the result. 

-Nampa/AFP