Can Maduro Pull off the Mother of All Electoral Frauds

Commentary by Ryan C. BergandChristopher Hernandez-Roy

Published August 1, 2024

Venezuela is now living in the post-electoral moment of one of the most brazen thefts in modern Latin American history. Fortunately, the Venezuelan opposition was well prepared for this. In a June 2023 event with CSIS, opposition leader María Corina Machado predicted that if there were elections in Venezuela, "there are only two outcomes: a landslide victory or an obscene fraud." These words have proven prophetic in recent days, as both of these outcomes have transpired.

President Nicolás Maduro had telegraphed his intentions ahead of the vote by declaring that he would win "by hook or by crook" and recently warning that there would be a "bloodbath" in the country if he didn't win. The theft started months before the election, with the refusal by the regime to meet any of the conditions for freer and fairer elections that it had agreed to in the Barbados agreement. The regime barred Machado, and her first substitute, Corina Yoris, from running. It constantly harassed and persecuted members of the opposition, arbitrarily detaining dozens of workers from Machado's and later the official opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia's campaign staff on multiple occasions, including Machado's chief of security only days before the election. The government used regulatory bodies to close restaurants and hotels where Machado and González made stops to dissuade other businesses from providing services to their campaigns. Less than a month before the elections, the National Electoral Council (CNE) imposed new restrictions and obstacles for the opposition to accredit witnesses at polling places, and on election day it refused to allow some witnesses to access polling places and CNE headquarters. The council only allowed 69,000 Venezuelans abroad to vote, out of an eligible diaspora of some 5 million otherwise eligible citizens, who had already voted against the regime with their feet. The regime revoked an invitation to the European Union to conduct credible international observation, and only two days before the election it prevented a group of former Latin American presidents from traveling to Venezuela to do the same by closing the country's airspace ahead of their plane taking off from Panama.

Maduro's electoral theft was even rehearsed in December 2023, when the regime held a referendum on whether to illegally annex the Essequibo region, part of neighboring Guyana. The president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, claimed without proof that 10.4 million voters participated in that plebiscite, during which there were widespread reports of empty polling stations in the capital. The turnout was so low, with one estimate in the 1.5 million voter range, that the Venezuelan government was widely accused by analysts of falsifying the results. The CNE's announcement that Maduro had won the 2024 presidential election with 51.2 percent of the vote to González's 44.2 percent followed the same pattern. It flew in the face of a Clear Path Strategies poll from July 10 that showed a significant 21-point lead for González over Maduro. It also defied Edison Research exit polls, which had González at 65 percent to Maduro's 31 percent. More importantly, the CNE's announcement did not square with the over 80 percent of voter tally printouts from Venezuela's electronic voting machines in the opposition's possession, gained through a robust network of accredited witnesses, which reflect that González won the election with 6,275,130 votes to Maduro's 2,759,256. The opposition has posted its tally sheets on a website, but access to it has been blocked. The regime, meanwhile, has protected as many tabulations from scrutiny as possible, in some cases taking them out of voting centers at gunpoint, and has now begun to consolidate its theft of the election.

Cementing "Facts on the Ground"

Mao Zedong famously said that revolutionary parties must "seek truth from facts." But Maduro's United Socialist Party of Venezuela is busy reconstructing facts to hide the truth. In other words, the Maduro regime is actively attempting to cement alternative "facts on the ground." Maduro has insisted on the narrative of his victory issued by the CNE on election night, leveraging what political scientist Javier Corrales has termed "autocratic legalism." He has also promoted his election certification by the CNE, as well as televised his appearance in the country's Supreme Court to present purported documentation of his victory (though nobody has seen said documentation).

Meanwhile, repression has escalated, with street-level protests facing resistance from security forces (mainly the National Police, the National Guard, and regime-aligned colectivos) and with dozens already dead. National Assembly speaker and regime heavyweight Jorge Rodríguez has called for Machado and González to be arrested, and other opposition leaders have been hauled away by Maduro's secret police. A rapid increase in repression has led some analysts to speculate that Maduro may go "full Ortega," after the totalitarian Ortega-Murillo regime governing Nicaragua.

The regime has been trying to convince some of its most important leftist allies-Colombia and Brazil, and to a much lesser extent, Mexico-to accept Maduro's narrative. Critically, both Colombia and Brazil have so far withheld their recognition of the CNE-published results, insisting on greater transparency in the vote tabulations. The regime knows what the United States and the opposition knows: where Colombia, and especially Brazil, go on the question of Maduro's legitimacy is likely where many Latin American countries will land eventually. The United States and other partners have worked assiduously to keep Colombia and Brazil from endorsing Maduro's mega fraud and further cementing "facts on the ground." Maduro has asked for more time under the pretense of a hacking operation against the CNE, which Colombia and Brazil seem poised to entertain. His regime has promised to release vote tabulations, a key ingredient of their endorsement, by the end of the week.

The Maduro regime has a clear message for its reticent leftist partners: stability rests with the regime. On the other hand, Maduro claims that chaos would befall Venezuela in a democratic transition scenario and that it is in fact in everyone's interest to control protests quickly. At the same time, his neighbors, which collectively host more than 3 million Venezuelan refugees, certainly fear a new wave of mass migration should Maduro consolidate his hold on power. An April poll by Caracas-based Delphos showed that close to 25 percent of Venezuelans would consider emigrating if Maduro won the election. Maduro is betting that old political affinities and fear of chaos will trump the fear of more migration. He may well be right in his calculation, especially if either Colombia or Brazil crack in the first week after Venezuela's election. Both countries abstained from a July 31 vote on an Organization of American States (OAS) resolution which would have called on the Venezuelan authorities to immediately publish the vote tallies by voting precinct; Mexico was absent for the vote.

Nonetheless, Maduro risks a situation of severe international isolation, as well as a constitutional crisis, if he fails to heed the call to release vote tabulations. It is likely that regime cronies in the electoral body are working fastidiously to alter votes and fabricate tabulations aligning with the CNE's result. This is no easy task, however, especially in a landslide election. For instance, it took Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party three full days, working around the clock, to alter a third of the country's votes in its 1988 fraudulent election. By comparison, Machado's claim that over 80 percent of the tabulations recovered give an irreversible landslide victory to González means that Maduro would have to alter more than one-third of the country's votes. It will be extremely difficult for Maduro to fabricate tabulations that pass muster with the international community.

Security Forces and the Costs of Repression

In all its brutality, the Maduro regime is likely calculating how much repression it should use to keep a tight grip on power. To be sure, the regime can unleash untold amounts of repression, having at its disposal myriad state and non-state actors willing to act on its behalf. And since it is already under investigation by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, the regime is unlikely to be greatly concerned over the excessive use of force or massive human rights violations, both of which it employed to beat back the massive opposition protests of 2014 and 2017. In leading theorist Robert Dahl's famous work, Polyarchy, he assesses the costs of repression versus the costs of tolerance of an opposition victory for any authoritarian regime. The greatest opportunity for a chance to transition to democracy or re-democratize an authoritarian regime is when the dictatorship's costs of repression are higher than the costs of tolerating an opposition victory. Both Machado and González attempted to lower the costs to tolerating an opposition victory on the campaign trail with careful messaging about what a transition would look like. Nonetheless, it seems for now that most of the security forces are siding with Maduro-and are under extreme pressure to show a united front.

The security forces are key to regime continuity or regime transition. Both Maduro and the international community are well aware that the support of the country's defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, and the armed forces would be critical. While the armed forces have remained firm for now, with Padrino López accusing the opposition of attempting a coup, over time and as protestors continue to pour into the streets, military leaders must weigh whether they will stay loyal to a regime that has lost an election by as many as 40 points or step aside. The stakes could not be higher: if a group of the armed forces steps aside and the opposition fails, they will face severe repercussions. Well before Maduro, President Hugo Chávez invited the Cuban intelligence apparatus to build the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, a superstructure above the armed forces able to detect any whiff of defection and purge disloyal members. On the other hand, if a group in the armed forces delays their decision for too long, they may well be contributing to a self-fulfilling prophecy by helping the regime solidify "facts on the ground."

Creating Alternative Facts

To succeed in countering the regime's alternative facts, the Venezuelan opposition needs to focus on two principal tasks, among many others. First, it must maintain large, boisterous, and effective street-level protests. The images emanating from Venezuelan cities are important to keep foreign leaders from going wayward and recognizing Maduro's fraud. They also send the message that the Venezuelan people will not submit to such obscene cheating and that those in the streets are not only the opposition; Venezuela is in the streets. Effectively sending that message will help the international community understand that this is a country against Maduro-not a set of political parties. The viral images of protesters felling statues of the late Chávez send an equally important message: Venezuela is no longer Madurista nor Chavista. These acts serve as poignant reminders that a regime whose sole claim to govern resides in the monopoly of brutal force has lost its legitimizing power and thus its ability to cement "facts on the ground." These messages must also be directed toward the Venezuelan army, the ultimate arbiter in the country, to broaden the fissures that exist within the institution.

Second, the opposition should leverage the findings of the Carter Center, the only internationally recognized observation group allowed in the country, which after pulling all of its experts out of the country said on July 30 that the election "did not meet international standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic." It should do the same for the July 30 OAS Department of Electoral Cooperation and Observation report, which documented all of the regime's electoral abuses and dirty tricks in minute detail, concluding that "the official results are not trustworthy or deserving of democratic recognition." The opposition should also work with civil society organizations to harvest the vast pool of eyewitness and social media evidence showing abuses in polling stations and the strength of the vote against Maduro. Most importantly of all, it should seek to obtain additional unaltered tabulation sheets, which, along with the ones currently in its possession, serve as a powerful set of documents to decisively prove the regime's fraud. These provide the true facts that can prevent the Maduro regime from cementing its version of events and avoid the defrauding of the overwhelming will of the brave Venezuelan people.

Ryan C. Berg is director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Christopher Hernandez-Roy is deputy director and senior fellow with the Americas Program at CSIS.

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