CNE declares Maduro winner with 6.4 million votes amid fraud claims

Maduro clings to 6,408,834 votes as opposition demands tally sheets

Can a president be declared with 51.95% of the votes and not a single tally sheet shown? In Venezuela, the official answer is yes. The CNE's second bulletin awarded Nicolás Maduro 6,408,834 votes, 51.95%, against 5,326,104 (43.18%) for Edmundo González, and with that figure the count was closed. The opposition claims its candidate won by double and that the fraud is so crude it's almost offensive to call it that. While the number bounces on televisions around the world, documentary support is nowhere to be seen.

What results did the CNE give and why does the opposition reject them?

The official data is on the table and is concrete: 6,408,834 votes for Maduro and 5,326,104 for González. Everything adds up. It is the only thing that fits without discussion, because the body has not published the tally-by-tally detail that would allow reconstructing the result polling station by polling station and district by district. Without that breakdown, the declaration rests on a declared figure, not on a verifiable count.

That's where the standoff begins. One side of the analysis argues that the result was decided before counting and that the official machinery only needed a plausible percentage. The other responds that if there is no evidence of manipulation, the victory exists and the rest is noise. Between both extremes, the truth is that the only document that would settle the discussion remains hidden.

The missing tally sheets and a website that can't withstand scrutiny

The opposition environment spread a portal to consult the count by voter ID. According to those who tried it, it worked poorly: entering a real person's document, even taken from tally sheets circulating in images, returned an error, and it did not allow filtering by polling center or district. With those materials, the promised audit was in question.

Meanwhile, candidate Enrique Márquez assured that the nearly 9,000 tally sheets in his possession matched those displayed by María Corina Machado's team and confirmed González's victory. The question looms in every corner: if those tally sheets exist, why doesn't the body that organized the vote validate them?

The social toll: eight million abroad and $30 a month

The numbers used by critics of the regime paint a broken country: eight million exiles, an average salary of $30 a month, an 80% poverty rate and child poverty above 85%. Only 3% of the population would have access to university. Expropriations from small business owners number in the tens of thousands, and in the country with the world's largest oil reserves, some wait days to fill their tank.

The official narrative turns the tables: misery would be a consequence of sanctions and external blockade, not of management. That explanation, its defenders argue, would explain why part of the population continues to vote for Chavismo. The uncomfortable detail is that those who left could not vote: of the 5,500,000 Venezuelans eligible to vote abroad, only 79,000 did, according to data handled by the opposition.

Homicides: the only figure that drops, and at what cost

There is a data point that government defenders display without complexes: violent homicides fell, according to their account, from 28,000 in 2016 to less than 7,000 in 2023. The reduction would coincide, according to critics, with the suspension of human rights protocols and with deaths archived under the label of "resistance to authority." Improving security and doctoring statistics can be the same operation seen from two angles.

The streets, the gas and the thousand detained

After the announcement, thousands walked toward the presidential palace, some from rural areas. The response was tear gas and rubber bullets, according to circulating accounts. Then came the tally of repression: around 1,000 detained for the riots and as many identified. The official version speaks of agitators and sabotage; the other speaks of neighbors detained for posting messages or for refusing to repress.

The standoff is also played out in the narrative. For some, what peine shows that the apparatus holds without external intervention. For others, each detention confirms that the victory does not stand on its own.

The international echo: Borrell, the EU and Bildu's shift

Outside the country, recognition is stalled. Josep Borrell made clear that the European Union will not accept the victory without a "verifiable" result. In Spain, Bildu rectified and went on to ask Maduro to "present the tally sheets," after having legitimized the triumph. The formations that had supported the process gradually nuanced their position while the rest looked the other way.

The underlying argument is repeated ad nauseam: a dictatorship does not call elections, so calling them proves it is not one. North Korea also holds elections every legislature and no one calls it a democracy. The existence of the ballot says nothing about who counts the votes. And so we have been since the second bulletin, waiting for tally sheets that, apparently, must be on their way.