They are impartial if you consider relentlessly pushing radical communist agendas and disregarding information that hurts your political allies to be impartial. More uncomfortable facts: Maduro has killed tens of thousands of political dissidents nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country under his regime [0]. And exit polls overwhelmingly favored the opposition [1].
I've also seen claims that they get funding from USAID, though I haven't been able to confirm them
The fact that 8 million Venezuelans fled the country is of course sad, but the context is that the country has also been crippled by billion of dollars in sanctions. The UK alone "froze" 1 billion $ in Venezuelan's gold reserves.
The "Beyond Sanctions" section of this article goes into details:
Yeah, and Hitler said he was a national socialist. We don't need to judge truth based on the words found in random twitter bios. We can judge Maduro based on his actions- disappearing the opposition leader and permanently hiding local election tallies are not the actions of someone who trusts vindication by a fair and open system.
Each local voting location prints out its own ballot results. These are available to any local who wants to see them. Independent analyzers are putting together photos of these print-outs right now to try to confirm or challenge the results as we speak. As in the US, independent citizens volunteer to run and oversee these ballot locations. It would be impossible for Maduro to "permanently [hide] local election tallies"
The "National Lawyers Guild" is certainly not impartial, but you can't honestly say that "The Carter Foundation" is either. They pick sides all the time.
I'd never heard of the National Lawyer's Guild. According to Wikipedia:
"The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is a progressive public interest association of lawyers, law students, paralegals, jailhouse lawyers, law collective members, and other activist legal workers, in the United States."
This is surprising! I certainly have. Have you heard of the Carter Center? I hadn't till now.
> "Activists" not generally compatible with "impartial".
Hmmm I don't think I agree with this logic. Or, imo, if you took it seriously, you'd have to excuse the Carter Center just as well. Regardless, I don't see how your link supports this statement. It just seems to be an AI summary of a bunch of different articles?
How can you be creating a voting app and never heard of the Carter Center? They’ve observed elections in 40 counties since 1989.[1] they’ve even been critical of US elections.
The numerical problem does not hinge on the reputability of any particular observer organization, though. You can just verify it on a calculator yourself!
Similarly, the call for local vote tallies is not unreasonable. Venezuelan law dictates they should have been made available by the government, and they were not. Though a lot of people took cell phone photos of the voting machine printouts locally; see e.g. the thread at https://x.com/DavidRomro/status/1817782928279007350 .
I'm not sure I understand this battle-of-experts thing happening here. The Venezuelan authorities released the vote totals. They work out to exactly 51.2% vs 44.2%. That did not happen in the real world. Could not have.
We don't need the Carter Foundation to tell us these results are false. They are manifestly false.
That isn't the vote total, it is a provisional count. They're claiming "80% reported" which is already a tell that whoever is putting out the figures isn't treating them especially accurately. It is plausible that the figures are incompetence rather than malice and someone was back-calculating the number of votes from an accurate-enough percentage.
Pretty unlikely though. It isn't that hard to count votes.
Sure, but the 80% cutoff on the stat doesn't change anything here. The only way to report out these numbers is to start with the two percentages and work back to them, which would make them false!
I don't think there's a way to rescue these stats. Certainly I don't think the Carter Foundation or the International NLG has anything useful to say about them.
I would say that the obvious rigging of the vote is a desired effect. Ditto for the obviously outlandish accusations of meddling by the Chilean secret service.
I think the message being sent now is: "I can rig the elections, you see it, and you can't do anything about it. I win because I say so." And his supporters see it and are happy that their leader is not a wimp.
Sr. Maduro's friend, Mr. Putin, has been sending the same message last few election cycles, when he's been running for president in umpteen time, despite any limits set by Constitution, etc.
These aren't the vote totals. This is "80%" of the votes. No one has posted a link to the official statement. Votes are still being counted and we won't have the vote totals for a while
What difference does it make if they're 80% of the votes, or even 30% of the votes? 3.5MM votes is still too many for there to be any realistic possibility of seeing these round percentages in the vote counts.
You're literally building a voting simulator. There's no way you don't see that getting round percentages reported for "80%" of the votes is just as improbable as getting round percentages reported for 100% of the votes.
If you read the addendum to the article they provide a perfectly plausible explanation: namely that (only) rounded percentages were provided to an intermediary and from there they back-calculated the counts.
Given that the US has claimed vote rigging in the past in Venezuela without evidence contrary to the determination of international observers (and has and is trying to overthrow the government to install a US-backed one) claims of vote rigging should be viewed with an enormous amount of skepticism.
They reported vote counts for both candidates that were fictitious. I don't understand how anybody can rationalize that.
I'm no fan of Maduro but I care about the politics of the region a lot less than I do about the mathematics of the situation. It's alarming to see people try to back-rationalize how these numbers could have been legitimate because, for instance (elsewhere on this thread), "it would have been easy for them just make realistic numbers".
Whatever else happened, these numbers are fictitious. If you want to come up with scenarios where the numbers don't matter, that's fine, you do you, I won't get in your way. But you can't rescue the numbers themselves.
Anyone who calls this election fair is not impartial. The scale of the fraud is enormous and undeniable.
Tell me, how many Venezuelans abroad were able to vote? How many were kept out of the country because the borders were closed? How many were threatened or intimidated into voting for Maduro? How many votes were cast using false ID? How many were confused by the ballot which had 13 options to vote for Maduro? How many polling stations were closed at the last minute?
This is a strangely belligerent statement from an organization tasked with being impartial observers. I don’t know what to make of it, but it seems very odd.
edit: The use of the term “opposition” seems like a bit of a tell.
The National Lawyers Guild twitter profile reads:
"Human rights over property interests since 1937. Fighting for liberation, organizing in solidarity with radical movement leaders."
https://x.com/NLGnews
They are certainly not impartial.
They are impartial if you consider relentlessly pushing radical communist agendas and disregarding information that hurts your political allies to be impartial. More uncomfortable facts: Maduro has killed tens of thousands of political dissidents nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country under his regime [0]. And exit polls overwhelmingly favored the opposition [1].
0. https://www.unrefugees.org/emergencies/venezuela/#:~:text=Mo....
1. https://www.edisonresearch.com/edison-research-conducts-exit...
Exit polls favored Maduro at 54% of the votes:
https://x.com/Hinterlaces/status/1817599369471799639
The exit poll that you referred to, is by EdisonResearch
EdisonResearch is based in New Jersey, and doesn't have any prior experience with exit polls in Venezuela:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180528045149/https://www.ediso...
I've also seen claims that they get funding from USAID, though I haven't been able to confirm them
The fact that 8 million Venezuelans fled the country is of course sad, but the context is that the country has also been crippled by billion of dollars in sanctions. The UK alone "froze" 1 billion $ in Venezuelan's gold reserves.
The "Beyond Sanctions" section of this article goes into details:
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/07/30/venezuelans-re-e...
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Yeah, and Hitler said he was a national socialist. We don't need to judge truth based on the words found in random twitter bios. We can judge Maduro based on his actions- disappearing the opposition leader and permanently hiding local election tallies are not the actions of someone who trusts vindication by a fair and open system.
Each local voting location prints out its own ballot results. These are available to any local who wants to see them. Independent analyzers are putting together photos of these print-outs right now to try to confirm or challenge the results as we speak. As in the US, independent citizens volunteer to run and oversee these ballot locations. It would be impossible for Maduro to "permanently [hide] local election tallies"
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You're doing it too. You don't have to work this out in a chain of steps from first principles. Just look at the numbers.
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The "National Lawyers Guild" is certainly not impartial, but you can't honestly say that "The Carter Foundation" is either. They pick sides all the time.
I'd never heard of the National Lawyer's Guild. According to Wikipedia:
"The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is a progressive public interest association of lawyers, law students, paralegals, jailhouse lawyers, law collective members, and other activist legal workers, in the United States."
"Activists" not generally compatible with "impartial". Some coverage of the situation I found very helpful is available here: https://www.readtangle.com/venezuela-elections-explained-mad....
(Edit: Fixed link)
> I'd never heard of the National Lawyer's Guild
This is surprising! I certainly have. Have you heard of the Carter Center? I hadn't till now.
> "Activists" not generally compatible with "impartial".
Hmmm I don't think I agree with this logic. Or, imo, if you took it seriously, you'd have to excuse the Carter Center just as well. Regardless, I don't see how your link supports this statement. It just seems to be an AI summary of a bunch of different articles?
How can you be creating a voting app and never heard of the Carter Center? They’ve observed elections in 40 counties since 1989.[1] they’ve even been critical of US elections.
[1]https://www.cartercenter.org/peace/democracy/observed.html
The numerical problem does not hinge on the reputability of any particular observer organization, though. You can just verify it on a calculator yourself!
Similarly, the call for local vote tallies is not unreasonable. Venezuelan law dictates they should have been made available by the government, and they were not. Though a lot of people took cell phone photos of the voting machine printouts locally; see e.g. the thread at https://x.com/DavidRomro/status/1817782928279007350 .
I'm not sure I understand this battle-of-experts thing happening here. The Venezuelan authorities released the vote totals. They work out to exactly 51.2% vs 44.2%. That did not happen in the real world. Could not have.
We don't need the Carter Foundation to tell us these results are false. They are manifestly false.
That isn't the vote total, it is a provisional count. They're claiming "80% reported" which is already a tell that whoever is putting out the figures isn't treating them especially accurately. It is plausible that the figures are incompetence rather than malice and someone was back-calculating the number of votes from an accurate-enough percentage.
Pretty unlikely though. It isn't that hard to count votes.
Sure, but the 80% cutoff on the stat doesn't change anything here. The only way to report out these numbers is to start with the two percentages and work back to them, which would make them false!
I don't think there's a way to rescue these stats. Certainly I don't think the Carter Foundation or the International NLG has anything useful to say about them.
7 replies →
There’s a literal website with the pictures from the raw voting records.
People in this thread don’t know a lot of about the Venezuelan situation for how many opinions they seem to emit.
1. https://x.com/rusosnith/status/1818457492893884814?t=BtVOVhD...
I would say that the obvious rigging of the vote is a desired effect. Ditto for the obviously outlandish accusations of meddling by the Chilean secret service.
I think the message being sent now is: "I can rig the elections, you see it, and you can't do anything about it. I win because I say so." And his supporters see it and are happy that their leader is not a wimp.
Sr. Maduro's friend, Mr. Putin, has been sending the same message last few election cycles, when he's been running for president in umpteen time, despite any limits set by Constitution, etc.
[flagged]
These aren't the vote totals. This is "80%" of the votes. No one has posted a link to the official statement. Votes are still being counted and we won't have the vote totals for a while
What difference does it make if they're 80% of the votes, or even 30% of the votes? 3.5MM votes is still too many for there to be any realistic possibility of seeing these round percentages in the vote counts.
You're literally building a voting simulator. There's no way you don't see that getting round percentages reported for "80%" of the votes is just as improbable as getting round percentages reported for 100% of the votes.
2 replies →
If you read the addendum to the article they provide a perfectly plausible explanation: namely that (only) rounded percentages were provided to an intermediary and from there they back-calculated the counts.
Given that the US has claimed vote rigging in the past in Venezuela without evidence contrary to the determination of international observers (and has and is trying to overthrow the government to install a US-backed one) claims of vote rigging should be viewed with an enormous amount of skepticism.
They reported vote counts for both candidates that were fictitious. I don't understand how anybody can rationalize that.
I'm no fan of Maduro but I care about the politics of the region a lot less than I do about the mathematics of the situation. It's alarming to see people try to back-rationalize how these numbers could have been legitimate because, for instance (elsewhere on this thread), "it would have been easy for them just make realistic numbers".
Whatever else happened, these numbers are fictitious. If you want to come up with scenarios where the numbers don't matter, that's fine, you do you, I won't get in your way. But you can't rescue the numbers themselves.
10 replies →
Given the transparently fake vote totals, perhaps we can update our priors on the impartiality of this guild.
Anyone who calls this election fair is not impartial. The scale of the fraud is enormous and undeniable.
Tell me, how many Venezuelans abroad were able to vote? How many were kept out of the country because the borders were closed? How many were threatened or intimidated into voting for Maduro? How many votes were cast using false ID? How many were confused by the ballot which had 13 options to vote for Maduro? How many polling stations were closed at the last minute?
This is a strangely belligerent statement from an organization tasked with being impartial observers. I don’t know what to make of it, but it seems very odd.
edit: The use of the term “opposition” seems like a bit of a tell.
So much the worse for the National Lawyers Guild then! The numbers are undeniably fake.
> The National Lawyers Guild was also an observer
they sent 5 observers only per https://truthout.org/articles/maduro-wins-reelection-for-thi...
If you want to claim to be impartial, you need to make a case that you are not biased. The NLG is far from that.