Experts claim the audits of the voting system “are not being done rigorously”
Luis Lander, director at the Venezuelan Observatory on Elections (OVE) explained that the audits of the voting system are being carried out without the physical presence of national and international electoral observers. Although the National Electoral Council (CNE) enabled a streaming channel, little can be seen about the voting software and its operation on the machines through this platform.
“You can see the audience, composed of technicians from the political parties and representatives of the CNE, but the screen of the computer where the software is running is not shown. On previous occasions when audits have been carried out with the participation of on-site observation organizations, everything that is being done on the machine is projected on a screen and we are able to review the program line by line”, he explains.
Mr. Lander states that the audits of the software of the voting machines “are not done with the rigor that is required” and that has been implemented in previous electoral processes.
The journalist specialized in the electoral matters Eugenio Martínez also expressed his concern about the transmission platform enabled by CNE. “Until now, the live streaming has served to watch a corporate video and the process continuously interrupted for lunch break,” he wrote on Twitter.
The political scientist and former CNE adviser Jesús Castellanos criticized that during the audit the technician and his assistants were shown in camera more often than the operation of the program itself, planned to be used in the December 6 elections.
“I imagine it is not easy to translate an audit of the voting software in which the operators and the audience were shown more often than the operative system itself. I do not know what was more of a gimmick, the presentation of the machine or this”, he posted on Twitter.
Mr.Castellanos also wondered if the Electoral Power will disclose the names of the representatives of the Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America and those from Argentina, Turkey, Russia, and South Africa monitoring the elections remotely.
As it is a “new technological solution”, specialists argue that it takes a minimum of six months to be able to make a comprehensive and thorough evaluation of the voting software to guarantee that the electoral results reflect the will of the voters. However, the CNE directive only allocated 12 days for this phase of the process.
The nominal vote is “bureaucratized”
For OEV director Luis Lander, there is no doubt that the new voting system favors the “list vote” because it prioritizes the selection of the card of the political parties instead of a single candidate.
“The system encourages people to vote for the complete package (all the options within the party card) because the CNE has not explained how to cross-vote and unless the voter is very knowledgeable of the process, he will end up voting for a party card, ”he says.
This weakens the principle of personalization of the vote established by the Constitution and the Organic Law on Electoral Processes. “The Venezuelan electoral system should guarantee proportional representation and personalized voting, this means that the voter can vote by first and last name and have the option to cross-vote between the different candidates; if that is not facilitated we are returning to the electoral system of the last century ”, he argues.
Christian Chirinos secretary at Soluciones political party, stressed that cross-voting “has always been problematic,” even though he confirms that one of the observations made by his organization is that the software does not immediately allow the candidate to be located by name and surname, affecting the principle of personalization of suffrage.
“We think that it is necessary to make it easier for the voter to select a candidate by name and surname, as established by the Constitution,” he replied.
Soluciones also showed reservations regarding the overlap of the simulation test and the audit of the software. “We do not know what is the point of running a simulation during the audit process, we do not agree with that. In any case, we do not know if it will ultimately be carried out because there are still many issues to solve in the face of a full simulation of the whole electoral process” Mr. Chirinos said.
“Otherwise the process has been successful so far, each party has its own code to audit,” he adds.
The representative of political party Avanzada Progresista before the CNE, Ricardo Ríos, affirms that the Electoral Power “bureaucratizes the uninominal vote” because the voter has to take two or three additional steps to vote for a specific candidate or to cross vote.
He also thinks it is unwise to hold a simulation test before the end of the audit process of the software. “That reasoning is political, not technical. The idea is to identify the shortcomings during the simulation and make the appropriate corrections, ”he says.
The simulation test is scheduled for October 25, and the audit spans from October 12 to October 31.
Mr. Ríos agrees that the live streaming of the audit process does not allow national and international electoral observation organizations to evaluate the system properly. “The audit looks more like a guided visit to a museum. That is why we receive advice from technical experts who ask very important questions that we later transmit to the organizers,” he said.
He emphasizes that his party has filed a claim for the delay in the accreditation of national observation organizations such as the OEV and the Electoral Observation Network from the Education Assembly.
The doubts about the providers of the software and the voting machines persist, the parties do not know how much the machines cost and they are not sure if all the hardware needed for the election is already in the country.
Translated by José Rafael Medina
