Independent election experts legitimize tally sheets Venezuela’s opposition says prove Maduro lost

MEXICO CITY (AP) — An independent group of election experts that observed Venezuela’s July presidential election on Wednesday legitimized the vote tally sheets the opposition has offered as proof of President Nicolás Maduro’s defeat, telling the Organization of American States the electronic balloting system worked and the ruling party as well as other stakeholders “know the truth.”

The assertions from an expert with the U.S.-based Carter Center came during a session convened by members of the regional body to address the dispute that emerged from Venezuela’s presidential election. The group was one of the two independent panels that the government invited to observe the vote on July 28, which electoral authorities claimed – without offering any proof – favored Maduro.

The dispute has centered on thousands of tally sheets known as actas — printouts that resemble shopping receipts — that have long been considered the ultimate proof of election results in Venezuela. Each of the 30,000 electronic voting machines used in the July 28 election printed several copies of the sheets, which representatives of participating parties have a right to obtain when the information is transmitted to the National Electoral Council.

Ruling party-loyal electoral authorities declared Maduro the victor hours after polls closed, but they did not publish results broken down by voting machine as they had done in previous presidential elections. They claimed they could not release the detailed information because their website was hacked.

The main opposition coalition, however, secured tally sheets from more than 80% of voting machines and published them online. The government then claimed those records were false and opened an investigation against members of the opposition, including the coalition’s candidate Edmundo González.

“The voting system is electronic, but it offers a paper trail – proof of what the electronic machine reports – and that is what was collected by tens of thousands of poll watchers, not just from the opposition, but also from the government party, the PSUV, that also has the same information,” Jennie Lincoln, who led the Carter Center’s mission to Venezuela, told diplomats Wednesday before showing them tally sheets.

Lincoln stopped short of declaring Gonzalez the election winner, telling diplomats that “observers do not pronounce elections” as “that is the responsibility of the electoral authorities.”

Lincoln said the Carter Center recently received via international mail the tally sheets she showed during the session. She did not say who sent them, and the organization did not immediately respond to a request from The Associated Press seeking more information on the records.

The Organization of American States and several governments have urged Venezuela’s electoral authorities to published detailed voting data. Wednesday’s session was convened at the request of Argentina, Costa Rica, Panama, the United States, Guatemala, Guyana, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador.