‘No evidence’ of Venezuela vote hacking, says Carter Center mission chief

Venezuela’s CNE president Elvis Amoroso shakes hands with the Carter Center’s principal advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean Jennie Lincoln in Caracas in April 2024 – Copyright AFP/File Juan BARRETO

Javier TOVAR

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

On election night, the president of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, declared a win for President Nicolas Maduro 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 Center 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 an election day or election night,” Lincoln said, speaking from Atlanta, Georgia where the center 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 that the delay is meant to help avoid giving actual results that would show opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia won.

The CNE ratified Maduro’s victory Friday with 52 percent 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 percent.

“Even though the playing field was very uneven, the Venezuelan people went to vote,” Lincoln said.

“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 center “ran the same numbers” from the available data that the opposition used and — along with other organizations and universities — confirmed Gonzalez as the winner with more than 60 percent 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 theater,” Lincoln said.

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

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