Imagine the Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) football club is playing against Real Madrid. PSG dominates the match, winning most duels, creating the best plays, and scoring the most goals. However, at the end of the game, the referee, who happens to be a shareholder of Real Madrid, declares Madrid the winner with a score of 5-4. PSG protests, demanding a detailed explanation. According to their own tally, they won 7-3. They ask for the match sheet to see who scored, when, and how. The referee rejects the request, merely reaffirming that Real Madrid won. PSG then decides to post their goals online and creates a webpage where everyone can see the key plays and goals, clearly showing they won 7-3.
This sports analogy helps explain what happened during the Venezuelan presidential elections on July 28, 2024: electoral fraud. The opposition to Nicolás Maduro's government, united around María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia, managed an incredible feat by rallying the vast majority of Venezuelans around a peaceful transition after 25 years of so-called socialist rule. Their campaign overcame massive obstacles placed by Maduro and his allies, including barring the opposition's primary candidate (hence the Machado-González ticket, with González on the ballot), threats and sanctions against opposition supporters, imprisonment of opposition leaders, and persecution of those against the regime. Despite the closures of hotels and restaurants hosting Machado and González supporters and media attacks against them, the opposition persisted, winning two-thirds of the vote on July 28.
How do we know the opposition won? In Venezuela, elections are digital, with machines transmitting results to the National Electoral Center (CNE). It’s a complex system, considered impossible to manipulate, as it involves three steps that must align. First, voters prove their identity biometrically. Then, they cast their vote on a machine, which prints a paper ballot they place in a box. The machine regularly sends the results electronically to the CNE. At the end of the day, each voting machine prints a record of the data it sent, which is verified and signed by party witnesses at each polling station. This printed record must match the machine’s results published by the CNE. Finally, the printed records are compared to the paper ballots in the boxes.
The opposition obtained around 80% of these printed records, which they published on a website (immediately banned in Venezuela). The CNE, on the other hand, released nothing, simply declaring at 12:30 AM on July 29 that Maduro had won with 52% of the vote. In a scene reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch, the CNE’s numbers added up to 109%, further fueling public outrage.
Venezuelan election law is clear: the CNE has 48 hours to publish detailed results. This deadline has long passed. It’s these detailed results, reflecting the printed records in the opposition's hands, that other countries, including France, are asking to see.
The Maduro government’s excuse for the delay is far-fetched. They claim to have suffered a “brutal cyberattack” orchestrated by Machado (and, of course, the United States) from Macedonia. If true, Venezuela would hold the world record for the longest cyberattack — typically resolved in hours, Maduro’s one would have lasted over five days.
Your typical banana republic dictator would have fabricated fake records to present them as genuine. But in this case, it wasn't so simple. Apart from having to force over 30,000 polling witnesses to sign false records (or forging their signatures), they would also have had to fake the sequences of numbers (a cryptographic hash) on each record, along with their QR codes… an almost impossible task.
Maduro's response has instead been to resort to violence and repression to silence dissent. His paramilitary groups, known as “colectivos,” masked men on motorcycles, shoot live ammunition to disperse spontaneous protests. Police and military forces have unleashed a chilling wave of illegal arrests. Most recently, Maduro announced plans to build “two high-security prisons” for the “thousands of terrorists” contesting the election results, even stating he plans to “reeducate” them through forced labor.
As of now, Machado and González are hiding in Venezuela. Their lives are in danger, but they continue to call for peaceful protests. Meanwhile, Venezuelans endure violence from a state that refuses to face the truth. Their message to the government is clear: “We no longer want you, and we will fight for our freedom.”
— Vicente Ulive-Schnell, writer and philosopher, author of Les Poissons de Caracas (Intervalles, 2024).