The electronic voting system in Venezuela is fairly robust. That is: It’s very difficult to manipulate the vote counting without leaving a trace. And that’s the regime’s Achilles’ heel. Eugenio G. Martínez is a well-known experts on the voting system. In an interview with Jorge Ramos, he explained it thus (my translation from Spanish):
Ramos: If Maduro loses, there would have to be a negotiation process. Is amnesty a possibility? Otherwise, the political cost would be very high. He would end up in prison.
Martínez: You are right. Losing power comes with a great cost. Staying in power does not. There are six months between the transfer of power and the election. In these six months, the governability of the country is threatened. There has to be a negotiation process with the international community to guarantee governability and that the transfer of power be orderly.
Ramos: I have serious doubts. They organize the election, they count the votes. How will they accept defeat?
Martínez: The automated system is so robust because the Venezuelan government wanted to avoid that the opposition could commit fraud. So now, the controls of this automated system works against the government.
Ramos: But they can announce whatever result they want.
Martínez: You are right. They can announce any results, but it will be very evident if there is manipulation of the results. This would lead to a process of isolation. It would be very difficult for Maduro to remain in power.
There is also a more detailed article at El País English. Some relevant parts:
At the start of the 2000s, when Chavismo was in its early days of power, its leaders feared that their opposition was plotting fraudulent maneuvers during the elections. At that point, in agreement with other political factions, they implemented an automated voting system to prevent cheating. Now, two decades later, and with the Chavista government in control of the National Electoral Council (CNE), this same system has emerged as a source of hope for the opposition, which believes it has enough support to win the presidency.
How does the system work?
- Before the election, opposition witnesses can scrutinise the machines.
- On the day itself, opposition witnesses are present at the vast majority of voting centres.
- Voters cast their vote on screen and receive a receipt which they drop into the ballot boxes.
- The machines operate autonomously throughout the day.
- At the end of election day, the machines print out a total of the votes, which witnesses such as CNE employees see.
- The machine then transmits this total to the CNE data centre in Caracas, where opposition witnesses are also present.
- The totals of all voting centres are published for verification.
Should the votes in the data centre be falsified, the published data would contradict the physically printed totals of the voting machines. This should also be noticed by the witnesses in the data centre.
So far, the autocracy has not attempted to falsify the figures in the published data. The electoral authority CNE is under control of the regime and could well announce a false result without breaking down the results by polling station and thus making verification more difficult. This happened in the 2017 Constituent Assembly elections and the referendum on the annexation of Essequibo, where there were no credible turnouts.
So the autocracy is using dirty tricks, but it will hardly be able to falsify the vote count itself without being recognised. Instead, it abuses all the means of power at its disposal: imprisoning opposition politicians, public spending before the elections, depriving millions of emigrants of the right to vote, intimidating voters, leaving polling centres open, harassing state employees, excluding election observers, ‘assisted voting’…
Some of these tricks are recognisable on the ballot paper itself if you know the story behind the heads.