The General Secretary of the United National Movement, Petre Tsiskarishvili, shared information through a media outlet (source, from 52:20) alleging that although Venezuela has implemented similar voting technologies as Georgia, election outcomes there were still falsified.
FactCheck has assessed how voting outcomes were falsified in Venezuela and identified similarities and differences between the election technologies implemented in Georgia and Venezuela.
Venezuela held its presidential elections on 28 July 2024. On 29 July 2024, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) declared the incumbent president, Nicolás Maduro, as the winner with 51% of the votes whereas the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, received 44%. The CNE has not published certified precinct-level results, citing a cyberattack on their system.
Protests erupted in Venezuela on 29 July against election fraud.
Smartmatic, whose technologies have been implemented in Georgia, previously worked with Venezuela’s CNE from 2004 to 2017; however, following the National Constituency Assembly elections in 2017, Smartmatic publicly stated that Venezuela’s National Elections Council had announced results different from those collected by the voting system. In March 2018, and after 15 elections providing secure and auditable voting systems, Smartmatic voluntarily ceased all business in Venezuela.
FactCheck contacted representatives of Cotejo – a Venezuela-based organisation deemed compliant with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) principles – to acquire in-depth information regarding the voting technologies in Venezuela.
The voting machines (EC-21) used in Venezuela since 2020 were designed in Venezuela by Venezuelan technicians (although the initial prototype was assembled by the Argentine company Ex-Clé, the subsequent machines have been manufactured in China).
These digital voting technologies are not connected to the internet, thus minimising the risk of both external and internal interference. Furthermore, the machines generate a paper trail, ensuring high privacy of voting results. After a vote is cast, the machine prints out a paper receipt of the vote which must be placed in the ballot box. Simply put, the electronic machines provide every voter with a paper receipt indicating which candidate they supported. Voters are supposed to deposit their receipts in ballot boxes before leaving the polling station.
The number of votes recorded by the machine should be equal to the number of ballots/receipts in the ballot box at the end of the election day.
The voting machines transmit data to the CNE at the end of the day in one of the three following options:
1) The first option is to transmit data via a telephone line created by the state-owned company Cantv. However, the network currently used is an alternate network configured by Cantv and subsequently audited to guarantee that the transmitted data is encrypted and indecipherable by third parties.
2)The second option is used if the Cantv modem fails to work. In this case, the cellular data is transmitted through a Movilnet wireless modem. This line is also configured to be indecipherable by third parties. The modems use preconfigured numbers included in a whitelist to ensure that only those specific numbers can transmit data through the cellular line.
3)If the Movilnet line also fails, a connected port can be used to transmit data via a satellite antenna. The information is sent exclusively to a satellite antenna meant for the CNE.
The transmitted data from each precinct, sent via one of the aforementioned channels, are electronically sent to the Totalisation Centres prior to announcing the final results. However, physical copies of the results are also distributed, including the records printed by the voting machines and the ballot boxes containing the paper receipts.
The electronic machines provide every voter with a paper receipt indicating which candidate they supported. Voters are supposed to deposit their receipts in ballot boxes before leaving the polling station. The digital voting machines print records of the precinct’s tally sheets after the polls are closed. The copies of these sheets are handed over to the representatives of political parties present at the precincts.
On the one hand, the representatives of opposition parties were not allowed to be present at the election precincts and observe whilst, on the other hand, the CNE did not publish the final tally sheets of the election machines. However, the opposition managed to obtain a significant number of electoral records.
The opposition claims that the final results declared by the CNE significantly differ from the machine-printed tally sheets. At least 83.5% of the voting records, representing over 25,000 electoral precincts, are available on the website of the opposition alliance, suggesting that the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, won with a notable advantage (67%). The Washington Post verified approximately 97% of the valid sheets published by the opposition, covering nearly 80% of the tally sheets (representing over 23,000 precincts), concluding that the tally sheets printed by the machines and the official results declared by the Venezuelan government did not match, suggesting that Maduro lost.
The Associated Press conducted a similar investigation, verifying approximately 79% of the precinct-level tally sheets, covering nearly 24,000 precincts. Each tally sheet contains a unique code, time and date of printing, the watermark of the precinct and the signatures of the personnel and observers present at the station. The authenticity of each tally sheet can be verified through its assigned QR code – decoded and analysed to confirm its legitimacy. Notably, the aggregated voting results published by the opposition and subsequently verified by the Washington Post and the Associated Press are in line with the Parallel Vote Tabulation conducted by AltaVista Research, a Caracas-based initiative with certain ties to the opposition.
Whilst the aforementioned voting machine-printed tally sheets were previously considered proof of credibility of voting results in Venezuela, the government’s refusal to publish them this year has cast called into question the validity and legitimacy of the declared results. Representatives from other countries and organisations, including the presidents of Brazil and Colombia, called on Maduro to release the precinct-level voting results, emphasising that the aforementioned procedure is an integral part of the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of election results.
The Carter Centre – an independent election monitoring organisation invited to observe the elections in Venezuela – reported that the 2024 Venezuelan presidential elections did not meet international standards and thus cannot be declared democratic. Furthermore, the Carter Centre underlined that Venezuelan authorities have not released the precinct-level results.
According to the Carter Centre, an independent election monitoring organization that was invited to observe the elections in Venezuela, the 2024 presidential elections in Venezuela failed to meet international standards and, therefore, cannot be considered democratic. The Carter Centre also highlighted the fact that Venezuelan authorities have not released the results of each district.
Therefore, the Venezuelan government and the CNE did not use electronic voting technologies for election fraud. On the contrary, the tally sheets printed by the vote-counting machines (which the opposition managed to obtain) are the only evidence by which the opposition claims that the CNE falsified the results.
Regarding the electronic voting technologies in Georgia, the Central Election Commission of Georgia (CEC) is supported by Smartmatic – one of the leading companies in the elections industry.
The digital devices placed at electoral precincts; namely, the voter verification and vote-counting machines, are not connected to the internet, thus eliminating the possibility of external interference, even including the CEC personnel. The ‘paper trail’ system is another key security measure. Particularly, voters mark their choices on paper ballots which are then placed into the vote-counting machines. Votes will also be tabulated manually at each precinct with an electronic voting technology with an advantage given to the manual count. Additionally, it should be noted that the results from the machines aligned with manual tabulation at every polling station where the new practice was tested.
The claim that ‘Venezuela uses the same voting technologies as Georgia but election results were still falsified there’ could be misinterpreted as it might suggest that election fraud was a result of the technologies. Electronic voting technologies that have been implemented in Georgia are not identical to those in Venezuela as they are produced by different manufacturers. Furthermore, Smartmatic, whose technologies are used in Georgia, publicly accused Venezuela of election fraud in 2017 (when the Venezuelan government announced different results that what was reported on the machine-printed tally sheets).
Moreover, election fraud in Venezuela did not occur due to electronic voting technologies. On the contrary, the vote-counting machines were the evidence for falsified results (once again, the government announced false results) – the tally sheets printed by the machines could not be falsified, hence proving that Maduro deliberately announced inaccurate results. The international community underlines the importance of using electronic technologies, especially in the context of Venezuela, to ensure credibility and legitimacy of election outcomes.
