Did Chavez’ Pick Steal the Election in Venezuela?
By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine – Leer el artículo en español aquí.
Tuesday, 23. April 2013
The guy in the cheap brown windbreaker walking up the dirty tenement steps to my New York office looked like a bus driver.
Nicolas Maduro, elected President of Venezuela last Sunday, did indeed drive a bus, then led the drivers’ union, then drove Chávez’ laws through the National Assembly as Venezuela’s National Assembly chief.
And this week, the US State Department is refusing to accept the result, suggesting Maduro hijacked the vote count. But did he?
EXTRACT:
Chávez himself read my findings on potential elections theft – to his nation on his TV show – and then he moved swiftly, establishing an election system that Jimmy Carter, who has headed vote observer teams in 92 nations, called, “an election process that is the best in the world”.
Here’s how it works: every Venezuelan voter gets TWO ballots. One is electronic, the second is a paper print-out of the touch-screen ballot, which the voter reviews, authorises, then places in a locked ballot-box. An astounding 54 percent of the boxes are chosen at random to open and check against the computer tally. It’s as close to a bulletproof count as you can get.
Still, the loser bitched and – his bluff called – was allowed to pick all the precincts he wanted – 12,000 – to add to the audit.
And that’s why the US State Department then has to turn to the threat of bullets and “Third Ring” mayhem in the streets – to undermine the legitimacy of the new Maduro government and signal the US willingness to support a new coup.
Phi Beta Iota: Evidently the US State Department definition of democracy is now the same definition promoted by the neo-conservatives going back to the coups against Guatemala and Iran in the 1950's. Evidently the US is now in the business of rigging everyone else's elections, not just our own. When do such outrages get to a World Court? When do such outrages get rejected by We the People in whose name these crimes against hunmanity are being carried out? When do the vast majority of our loyal good-hearted and earnest government employees stop going along with actions and investments that are in direrct contradiction to the Constitution and the values of the Republic as originally formed?
See Also:
Henry Kissinger: “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
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