6 million voters in the country and 4 million abroad would need to register or update their data

With 2 and a half years before the next Presidential Elections, which must be held no later than December 2024, Venezuelan Civil Association Súmate considers that the update of the electoral register is one of the actions that the board of directors of the National Electoral Council (CNE) must urgently undertake for the holding of the electoral process and guaranteeing the human and constitutional right to elect of all Venezuelans over 18 years of age, inside and outside the country.

According to the estimates made by the electoral citizen organization with data from the CNE, the National Institute of Statistics (INE), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the right to elect must be guaranteed to more than 10 million Venezuelans between April 2022 and December 2024, who must register or update their personal information in the electoral register. This number includes:

– 3,017,037 Venezuelans of voting age (18 to 45 years old) that are not registered in the Electoral Register as of April 2022, including:

1 million unregistered citizens under the age of 45 living abroad.

2,017,037 unregistered citizens under the age of 45 living in Venezuela.

– 1,396, 356 people who will turn 18 between April 2022 and December 2024, including

256,371 Venezuelan citizens abroad.

1,139,985 Venezuelan citizens who reside in the country.

– 3,299,663 Venezuelans over 18 years of age residing abroad and registered to vote in Venezuela, who need to update their place of residence and voting center abroad.

– 2,574,831 already registered Venezuelan citizens who need to update their place of residence and voting center in Venezuela, including:

1,574,831 Venezuelans relocated by the CNE without notice between August 2019 and April 2020, a period in which the electoral register was not opened for new registrations or updates.

At least 1 million Venezuelans who have migrated to the country’s main urban centers as a result of the economic crisis, the crisis of public services, the search for better living conditions, and armed conflicts in border states, among other factors; and that have not been able to update their place of residence and voting center between 2015 and 2022 due to deficiencies during the process of registration and update in this period.

According to the INE, the population projections for December 2024 stand at 34,268,343, with at least 75 percent over the age of 18 able to vote and register in the Electoral Register. This implies that more than 10 million Venezuelans out of 25.7 million citizens who would be of voting age by 2024 in the country and abroad, or 4 people in every 10, would not be able to vote in the 2024 presidential election if the CNE does not promptly carry out a plan to guarantee the right to vote and prevent this group of Venezuelans from being excluded.

In order to comply with the CNE’s constitutional and legal obligation to guarantee the vote in the 2024 presidential election to the more than 10 million Venezuelans who would need to register or update their place of residence and voting center, Sumate recommends the following actions that we believe should be approved by the board of directors and carried out by the Commission of Civil and Electoral Register in the course of the next 2 and a half years:

1. Actions within the national territory:

  • Expand the permanent network of points for Registration and Update in the Electoral Register.
    • 1 permanent point in each of the 335 municipalities of the country;
    • 1 point in each of the 100 parishes (municipal subdivisions) with the largest voting population,
    • Plus the 24 points that must operate in each Regional Electoral Office.
  • Organize Special Plans for Registration and Update in the Electoral Register with more than 1,000 points distributed according to the electoral population density and criteria of ease of access to citizens, as established in Article 33 of the Organic Law on Electoral Processes.
    • Implement at least one Special Plan every 3 months, with a duration of 30 calendar days, starting with two programs in the second half of 2022, four in 2023, and a further four in 2024.
  • Establish Registration and Update points in response to the request of Organizations with Political Purposes, Civil Society Organizations and organized communities, including universities, workers’ associations, and community associations, among others, as provided in article 33 of the Organic Law on Electoral Processes.

2. Actions abroad:

Updating the Electoral Register with the data of Venezuelan voters abroad requires understanding the impossibility of doing so with the current 127 consulates of Venezuela in 88 countries. For this reason, we make the following proposals:

  • Reach agreements with the receiving countries of the Venezuelan diaspora that allow increasing the number of points for Registration and Update in their main cities.
  • Consider and implement mechanisms for the remote registration and update of voters’ data in the Electoral Register through the use of technological means or mail.
  • Establish mechanisms to ensure the timely counting of the votes of Venezuelans abroad on election day (real-time totalization).

In this sense, it is important to highlight that a large-scale process of Registration and Update in the Electoral Register of Venezuelans abroad would later imply guaranteeing a structure for the exercise of their right to vote that would consist of the set up of thousands of polling stations in hundreds of cities where millions of votes would be processed. This reality would make Venezuelans abroad the group with the most electoral weight in the face of a national election, and changes in the electoral system would have to be considered to ensure the real-time totalization of the votes and their timely computation with the votes cast within the national territory since votes from abroad are currently computed several days or weeks after the elections.

Given that the Registration and Update in the Electoral Register of more than 10 million Venezuelans inside and outside the country in the face of the 2024 Presidential Election requires the systematic and coordinated planning of all the necessary actions to achieve this objective, the CNE has the obligation to:

– Prepare and publish a detailed timetable for the activities.

– Associate the execution of the activities with specific Registration and Updating goals.

– Publish the results of each stage of the timetable in a timely manner.

– Carry out a broad information and incentive campaign inside and outside the country, containing the location of the Registration and Update points, as required by Article 33.5 and 33.22 of the Organic Law on the Electoral Power, Article 33 of the Organic Law on Electoral Processes, and Articles 28 and 25 of the General Regulations of the Organic Law on Electoral Processes.

– Depurate the Electoral Register under a continuous and effective scheme, as required by articles 59.5 of the Organic Law on the Electoral Power, Article 34 of the Organic Law on Electoral Processes, and Articles 28 and 30 of the General Regulations of the Organic Law on Electoral Processes.

– Allow timely and full access to the detailed data on Registration and Update in the Electoral Registry to the Organizations with Political Purposes and Civil Society Organizations that monitor electoral matters, as stipulated in article 28 of the Organic Law on Electoral Process.

– Guarantee the presence of witnesses from political actors and national and international observers in all the activities of the timetable for Registration and Update in the Electoral Register.

– Set up a technical committee to follow up on the Registration and Update objectives, made up of representatives of political actors and civil society.

The challenge of registering and updating the data of more than 10 million Venezuelans inside and outside the country in the face of the 2024 Presidential Election requires a broad national discussion that involves political parties in the first place, civil society organizations, universities, professional associations, unions, churches, students, mass media and all citizen actors committed to the regaining trust in the vote as a solution to the serious political, economic, social and institutional crisis in Venezuela.

…We build democracy

Translated by Jose Rafael Medina