Venezuela’s opposition secured over 80% of crucial vote tally sheets. Here’s how they did it.

Caracas Venezuela — The statement that upset Venezuela occurred 24 hours after the polls closed in the presidential elections.

In the reassuring tone of someone who has consistently been considered an underdog, the power of the opposition Maria Corina Machado announced that his coalition had collected more than two-thirds of the vote count records from voting centers across the country, showing President Nicolas Maduro had lost his candidacy for re-election.

He minutes known as minutes (printouts that measure several feet and look like shopping receipts) have long been considered definitive proof of election results in Venezuela. Opposition members knew they had to get as many of them as possible. to refute the unfavorable election result They were waiting for the electoral authorities to announce.

Months of preparations and thousands of volunteers participated in the herculean task.

Their effort earned Maduro and his loyal National Electoral Council global condemnation, including from close regional allies, and fueled the anger of Venezuelans fed up with their nation’s cascading economy. In response, the government called for the arrest of opposition leaders, ending an election season marked by repression and irregularities.

This account of the opposition effort is based on public statements as well as interviews with party representatives, volunteers and others involved, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of government retaliation.

Tens of thousands of volunteers have participated in training workshops across the country in recent months. They learned that, according to the law, they could be inside voting centers on election day, stationed near the voting machines, from before the polls opened until the results were transmitted electronically to the National Electoral Council in the capital, Caracas.

Organizational discipline was key to its success because the ruling party exercises strict control over the voting system. Polling places are guarded by soldiers, civilian militias, police and loyalists to the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

On Sunday, officials attempted to block opposition volunteers from entering voting centers and, in some places, succeeded. But in other places, the volunteers were unwavering and, once inside the voting centers, they did not leave, in some cases until after 11:00 p.m.

“They gathered courage with their law in hand, with the table manual in hand, and they managed to enter,” Machado said on Sunday, before the polls closed. He called party representatives and other volunteers “the heroes of this process.”

The 90,000 party representatives were taught to obtain a copy of the tally sheets, printed by electronic voting machines after the polls closed, before the results were transmitted to the council.

“Our representatives have the right to their minutes,” Machado said. “No representative leaves their voting center without the document in hand.”

Volunteers were also trained to use a customized app to report irregularities at voting centers, such as opening delays or power outages, and to scan a QR code printed on each counting sheet.

Venezuelans have used electronic voting machines for about two decades. The machines record the votes, provide a paper receipt for each voter and, after the polls close, print copies of the tally sheets, the length of which has given rise to the nickname “chorizo” in Spanish.

The counts show the total votes broken down by candidate, the QR code and the signatures of party representatives, an election body employee and election workers who are drawn to participate.

Each representative of a party has the right to a tally sheet, while another copy is placed in an envelope and delivered to the headquarters of the National Electoral Council.

Infighting and disorganization had systematically limited the ability of government opponents to secure and safeguard recounts in previous elections. But Machado stated that the opposition had obtained more than 70% of the sheets. That number would eventually grow to more than 80%.

The QR code scans gave a team of campaign workers immediate access to the voting results, which they tabulated Sunday night and Monday.

The National Electoral Council has not yet shared the counts on its website, which has been down since Monday. Although you are not required to publish images of the minutes, you have previously shared the totals of each minute.

The council reported Monday that Maduro received 5.1 million votes, while Edmundo González, Representing the opposition Unitarian Platform coalition, he earned more than 4.4 million. The president of the Council, Elvis Amoroso, on Friday provided updated results from 96.87% of the minutes, giving Maduro 6.4 million votes and González 5.3 million.

Eight other men competed for the presidency, including Enrique Márquez, a former member of the electoral council, who condemned the official results and lashed out at authorities for a lack of transparency.

“Most of our witnesses…were prevented from accessing the polling stations,” he told reporters. “Those who were able to enter witnessed the process and waited for the minutes, but they were not given them as required by law and its regulations. “Not only does it violate the law, but it generates darkness, opacity, lack of transparency.”

The opposition, election experts and foreign governments who question the official results, including President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, both allies of Maduro, who have urged him to make the sheets public.

Getting the “chorizo” from each of the 30,000 voting machines was only half the battle. The campaign needed to scan them completely using specially designed equipment to copy the minutes.

That’s when more volunteers came into play. If the party representatives did not feel safe or could not reach the locations where the scanners were located, volunteers met the representatives, took the sheets and transported them by motorcycle, car, bicycle and even boat to the corresponding locations.

When the president of the National Electoral Council, Elvis Amoroso, appeared on television giving Maduro a document certifying his victory, the opposition had scanned more than half of the minutes. Hours later, Machado and González appeared before journalists and announced the numbers that shook the country: vote counts show that González received approximately 6.2 million votes compared to Maduro’s 2.7 million. The scanned counts were also uploaded to a searchable website, and anyone who voted could use their government identification number to check the tally sheet belonging to the machine they used to vote.

The government then claimed that the electoral council’s website had been hacked. The president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, insisted that Maduro was the undisputed winner and called his opponents violent fascists. He requested the arrest of Machado and González.

Since then, Maduro has faced a cascade of criticism. International observers say they were unable to verify the results. Regional allies urged the government to publish the full vote count. On Thursday, the US government congratulated González on his victory.

“At least 12 million Venezuelans peacefully went to the polls and exercised one of the most powerful rights given to people in any democracy: the right to vote,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the processing of those votes and the announcement of the results by the National Electoral Council (CNE), controlled by Maduro, were deeply flawed, producing an announced result that does not represent the will of the Venezuelan people.”