Leaked phone calls: Capriles just wanted to make a scandal

[joshcryer]

111. The thing about the Carter report...

They highlighted a lot of stuff I pointed out here basically every problem I had with the elections, they noted. I got called a right winger at the time for noting them (I really wish kicking a post would bring it to the top but the archive doesn't work that way, or I'd prove all the slanders wrong). Capriles should've rightly complained about those issues at the time but he knew complaining would do no good. I frankly wish he did complain at the time because not making complaints in one election and making them in another is odious to the core. I understand why they didn't, though. Had Capriles won this time he could've pulled a Maduro and not wanted a recount or said "The system is perfect! It's unassailable!" But that would've been a lie, of course! No system is "best in the world"! In theory, if all constraints are met, yes, Venezuela's voting system is the best electronic system in the world (but I prefer paper ballots and will always consider them superior, like most other Latin American states).

In any event, the system is not "completely computerized." There are paper ballots for every single vote that is made. After they vote they do a "hot audit" of 54% of the votes, that is, they take the printout from the machine and compare it to a random sampling of the votes. I have been on record saying this is the best way to ever do electronic voting (it is simply impossible to game such a system if the hot audit is observed completely). However, it only works if you have observers there to look at the tally from the machine printout (called actas, which literally means "tally sheet" in Spanish). Otherwise the system can be gamed, trivially. It is, after all, an electronic voting system, where votes are virtual, and a flip of a bit can be coded without effort.

The Capriles camp alleged that they didn't have actas from polling stations representing 700k votes. I believe them when they say that. They could be lying, and if they are, I'd be the first to condemn it. But it makes no sense for them to make such a claim without there being proof of it (the proof being unsigned actas). And the PSUV didn't post the tally sheets (actas) to their website after saying they would which only leads me to believe it further. See, when you do the hot audit of 54% of the votes observers from both sides sign the tally sheets. Basically saying, "I agree that this tally sheet matches the hot audit of 54% of the votes." An unsigned tally sheet would be absolute proof that a given observer wasn't there to sign it (on either side).

Now, why they didn't have observers? They claim that they were kicked out. That I can believe to an extent because of the chavista polarization that permeates their politics. If I'm an opposition member and I want to observe something, they see me wearing colors of the opposition, one might not trust me to be there (not that it would matter since I'm simply observing). They might think I'm there to cause trouble or to claim fraud or to just be polarizing. On the other hand, it could've simply been a complete fail on the part of the campaign, that is, they didn't have volunteers to go into those polling stations and observe the hot audit.

Regardless, if the hot audit is not observed, the veracity of the votes can legitimately be called into question. Which is what Capriles did. Now, Capriles, being a crazy fucker, decided to double and triple down and claim illegitimacy of the President and at one point said he won if certain constraints were met (counting foreign votes and the implication of annulling votes in voting stations where observers weren't there; likely majority chavista polling stations).

I know what you're thinking. Why not just purposefully not allow observers in a polling station and then afterwards claim fraud. That may have happened! And that is why electronic voting is a farce, because it does allow such a thing to happen! And it allows crazy fuckers like Capriles to claim fraud in said event, because, logically, philosophically, and rationally, said electronic voting machines can't be trusted if all parties don't sign off on the tally sheets. That's why non-paper electronic voting machines are bullshit. In fact, in some areas (in the USA) they don't even have a VVAT (paper trail verification) for the machines, and when races are close? The recount is simply looking at what the machines say, there's no proof one way or another, in the form of humans actually printing out or signing a ballot.

Anyway, Capriles won Miranda against Maduro by almost 100k votes, which is a lot better showing than when he ran for governor where he won by I think 30k or so (back in Dec. of 2012). A recall would be fascinating there for me because it'd be interesting to see whether his crazy vote counting tactic paid off or was a disaster. At the bare minimum by counting the votes Maduro and the chavistas have diffused the situation.