Venezuelans go to the polls this Sunday, and the intl. news media will be right behind them. Already, you can find articles in English about the security and quality of the voting systems in Venezuela. For example:
Unlike with most U.S. electronic voting machines, Venezuelans will get paper receipts that verify their choices were properly recorded, and must deposit them into boxes before leaving the polls. After Sunday’s vote, election officials monitored by representatives of each candidate will count millions of the paper receipts for comparison to the electronic totals. (from the Boston Herald)
Having been physically stationed in Venezuela during the run-up to this election, and having voted in the November US election, I can personally vouch for the sophistication of the Venezuelan system. As for other factors that could weigh in on the validity of the vote and vote-counting process, I can only say that the Venezuelan has a central-command system that was ostensibly enacted to minimize political control. Venezuela in fact, has an entirely separate branch of government devoted entirely to elections. However, that does leave the system (arguably) more susceptible to large-scale fraud than the diffuse US system. To counter this possibility, Venezuela is about to meet every vote-auditing official on the face of this planet this weekend.
So - in a nutshell - this should be a valid vote. We'll see how this goes, and more importantly, how it is covered by the news (for instance - the headline of the Boston Herald article I excerpted to show the quality of the Venezuela voting system sneakily reads: "electronic vote distrusted in Venezuela")
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