On Friday, the Venezuelan opposition released a database with results from polling stations. The information, they say, corresponds to the minutes in their possession. The new file is hosted on the site resultadosconvzla.com, where the minutes of 24,532 polling stations, 81% of the total (30,026), have been available for consultation in scanned form for days. These documents are printed by the voting machines in each center, during election night, in a public process where copies are given to those present. The minutes are essential for verifying the disputed election result.
The following map shows the votes in each Venezuelan state, according to the database. We have calculated the total votes and percentages for each candidate independently, adding up the results table by table.
We have also calculated the total figures: according to the file with 24,532 rows, the opposition candidate Edmundo González would have 7,156,462 votes (67.1%), compared to 3,241,461 for Nicolás Maduro (30.4%); the other candidates add up to 261,205 votes. The three figures, as well as those of the States, coincide with the information published on the original website.
The published database can be searched table by table. In the graph we have represented all of them, showing for each one the votes for Maduro and González. The opposition candidate would have won in 87% of the machines.
The file contains detailed information about each table: the location of the table (state, municipality and parish), the code of the centre to which it belongs, its identifier, the votes for each candidate, the number of registered voters and valid votes. And another important thing: a link with the photo of the record. Here are 10 URLs that we took at random: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.
The information provided for each table, including the scans, can be consulted on the website distributed by the opposition. That is, anyone can potentially compare each row of the database with the image of the corresponding record.
As you can see in the image, each of the published minutes includes a lot of information, in addition to the result. The table is identified, the date and time of closing are offered, a chain hash security, and the name and signature of three members of the table, two witnesses and the operator of the device.
The minutes also include a QR code that encodes the results of the table. That is, by reading these codes, minute by minute, one should be able to replicate the database that the opposition has disseminated. This is what the Associated Press has done. On Friday, they successfully processed almost 24,000 images of minutes (97% of those presented by the opposition and 79% of all voting machines). They tabulated a total of 10.3 million votes, obtaining a distribution that essentially coincides with the total published on the opposition website: 6.89 million votes for Edmundo González and 3.13 for Nicolás Maduro.
The minutes are the document used to clarify the election results. Their information can be compared with the copies held by citizens, with the documentation in the National Electoral Council (CNE), and in general with the entire paper trail of the day, such as the minutes of the Verification Audit.
Finally, we show the results in 1,072 parishes, calculated by us from the aforementioned database. Again, the results we obtain coincide with the totals offered by the original website. Edmundo González obtained more votes than Maduro in 906 parishes.
Seven days after the elections in Venezuela on July 28, suspicions of electoral fraud are growing. The main reason? The uneven supply of information.
As we explained here, the Maduro government has offered little data to support its declaration of victory, while the Venezuelan opposition – which also claims to be the winner – has set up an operation to collect and present thousands of records. As we have just seen, it offers more information, exposes itself to evaluation, and in this way, increases the credibility of its version.
This Friday, both sides made announcements that highlight this contrast. The CNE issued a second bulletin of results that provided only a handful of figures at the national level, to ensure that, with 96.87% of the votes counted, Maduro was ahead of González by 51.9% to 43.1%. Hours later, the opposition posted the file we have described above, with 24,532 rows, one for each table.
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