Venezuela electronic voting machine company Smartmatic has issued a statement today, saying that official government figures on the recent controversial vote were clearly tampered with, and that the turnout figure was off by at least one million votes.
The weekend election was intended to establish a National Constituent Assembly, which would grant massively increased power to the ruling United Socialist Party. Officials claimed around 8 million voters had turned out and overwhelmingly approved of the scheme. Opposition figures said they doubted the turnout was even half as much, with virtually every opposition bloc boycotting the votes.
It’s interesting, however, that Smartmatic’s figure was only around one million off, whereas opposition groups were estimating an exaggeration of four to five million votes on the day it was held. Ironically, while this adds to the concerns of fraud, it actually suggests the fraud wasn’t as big as previously suspected.
The election has been widely condemned internationally, with a number of Latin American countries calling for Venezuela to move away from the measure and back toward democratic reform. The US has imposed sanctions over the vote, despite opposition complaints that US involvement risks undermining the international unity on the effort.
Another stupidity on the road to regime change and “democracy” promotion.
The election was constitutionally legal, and guarantees reforms. The problem for the opposition is — it is easy to buy support among politicians, but elections prove an entirely different story. Color revolutionaries or armed “moderate” headchoppers always have the same problem: if they do not succeed in scaring off the elected government into turning power over to them — in the long run they lose, as they do not have numbers behind them. Every chance of election scares them.
But more importantly — it is none of our business. The mere fact that we are spending millions on funding the regime change, as well as our political capital on this barely concealed intervention project, media energy on matters that are of no benefit to Americans, but only cost — tells us that neocon lunacy is alive and well. Neocon glutiny for power, the craving for “winning” for no good reason at all, is something to behold.
Antiwar shouldn’t be quoting Smartmatic, which is owned by Soros.
Maduro is stupid and needs to be replaced, but not by yet another Soros-backed revolution.
Antiwar.com quotes lots of people and organizations.
AntiWar should not be publishing obvious propaganda that it cannot validate.
Voting Machine Maker Says Venezuela Polls Rigged, Offers No Evidence
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com.es/2017/08/voting-machine-maker-says-venezuela.html
London-based voting machine maker Smartmatic claims the recent polls carried out in Venezuela this week were rigged. In their 5 minute video statement, however, they failed to provide any evidence. ….
Since no opposition auditors were there, no evidence has been provided that such irregularities occurred. Neither AP’s article nor Mugica’s full statement provide any evidence or explanation as to how Smartmatic “estimated” the final count regarding participation was off by “one million votes.” Mugica doesn’t even explain whether it was one million more than reported, or one million less.
Smartmatic either failed to reveal information it has regarding the final count, or has simply lied on behalf of the Venezuelan opposition and the powerful foreign interests sponsoring it from Washington, London, and Brussels.
This latest announcement, absent of any evidence to substantiate these accusations, calls into question Smartmatic’s professionalism, ethics, and impartiality. Other nations considering Smartmatic machines must consider the possibility that the company’s CEO may attempt to use his machines and their role in tallying votes to manipulate their internal politics as well.
This announcement also once again calls the Western media into question for failing to note the very obvious inconsistencies between Mugica’s conclusions and the lack of evidence provided to substantiate them.
US Regime Change in Venezuela: The Truth is Easy if You Follow the Money
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com.es/2017/07/us-regime-change-in-venezuela-truth-is.html
Venezuela’s ongoing crisis is not driven by political ideology – it is not a battle of socialism versus capitalism or dictatorship versus democracy – it is the result of two centers of political power possessing opposing interests and colliding geopolitically….
The Opposition is Pro-Washington, Not “Pro-Democracy”
As early as 2002, US-backed regime change targeting then Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, sought to violently overthrow Venezuela’s political order and replace it with one obedient to Washington. Current leaders of the opposition were not only involved in the 2002 failed coup, many are documented to have received political and financial support from the United States government ever since….
This includes several founders of the opposition party, Primero Justicia (Justice First), including Leopoldo Lopez, Julio Borges, and Henrique Capriles Radonski. The latter of the three has been prominently featured in Western media coverage lately.
US State Department documents reveal that the department itself along with US-funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been providing Venezuela’s opposition with support.
This includes a report titled, “Status of Capriles and Sumate Cases,” referring to the above mentioned Henrique Capriles Radonski and Sumate, a US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded front posing as an election monitor…..
Currently, NED’s own website features an extensive list of activities it is engaged in within Venezuela’s borders. It includes leveraging human rights for political gain, electoral manipulation, building opposition fronts, and expanding pro-opposition media. While each activity is labelled with benign titles, it is clear that none of these activities are done impartially, and as State Department documents reveal, these activities are done specifically for the benefit of the US-backed opposition.
Wall Street and Washington’s Open Conspiracy
After the death of Chavez in 2013, US-based special interests openly conspired to finally overturn the political order he built. Corporate-financier policy think tank, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) created a checklist of US foreign policy goals it sought to achieve in Venezuela. They included:….
More recently, another Wall Street-Washington policy think tank, the Brookings Institution, would publish in a paper titled, “Venezuela: A path out of crisis,” a 5-point plan toward escalating the crisis in Venezuela (emphasis added):………..
While the Western media attempts to frame Venezuela’s crisis as a result of “socialism” and “dictatorship,” it is clear by reading the West’s own policy papers that it is owed instead to a systematic assault on Venezuela’s sociopolitical stability and economic viability, spanning decades.
Venezuela is not the first nation in South America that the United States has sought to overturn by undermining its economy………….
Considering America’s extensive list of interventions, wars, and occupations it is currently involved in worldwide and the manner in which each was presented to the public – with ideology and humanitarian concerns used to manipulate public perception, and considering Venezuela’s opposition is a documented recipient of US support, it is clear that yet another intervention is under way, this time in South America.