Nicolás Maduro Declared Winner by Venezuela’s Supreme Court

The Supreme Court’s audit result comes as doubts continue to grow over Venezuelan opposition election claims of victory

Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice Declares Nicolas Maduro the winner of the July 28 presidential election

The election system in Venezuela has been declared one of the most secure in the world. A look at security measures highlights just how difficult it is to manipulate from within the system originally developed by Smartmatic. Argentinian Company Ex-CLE also helped develop the system that uses SHA-256 and AES algorithms meeting current Smartmatic standards. SHA-256 and AES are used across broad technologies from blockchain to banking.

SHA-256, or Secure Hash Algorithm 256-bit, is a patented cryptographic hash function that produces a 256-bit hash value. It's used for cryptographic security to ensure data integrity and security in digital communications. AES, or the Advanced Encryption Standard is a symmetric block cipher algorithm that encrypts and decrypts data using a single key originally designed to make U.S. government data less vulnerable to brute force attacks.

While Venezuela’s election system has been subject to cyberattacks – an ongoing attack on the Consejo Nacional Electoral’s (CNE), or National Electoral Council in English, website where results are typically published, and an attack on the transmission system which slowed down the transfer of information from the voting machines to the tallying centers – there are no reports of data being manipulated or altered.

This has raised many questions about Maria Corrina Machado’s opposition declaring Edmundo González the winner of Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election. The near impossibility of faking tally sheets from within the system makes the opposition’s publication of them on a website it created questionable because there is nothing to validate their claims.

Independent observers, the Washington Post, and the Associate Press could not authenticate the tally sheets provided by Machado’s team. More than three weeks after the election, no one has been able to validate their authenticity beyond a reasonable doubt. This brings up another question: If the opposition’s victory is undeniable (as they claim) in an electoral system that can’t be manipulated, why not present that evidence to the Supreme Court as the world watched?

The system generates paper tally sheets for each of the candidates which are then corroborated by the encrypted digital tallies at the CNE. This allows for every campaign to conduct its own verification. If questions arise, the Venezuelan Constitution requires the Supreme Court to conduct its own audit. Nine of the ten candidates were present at the Supreme Court hearing to turn in their audit results.

The opposition did not respond to the court’s summons to present its findings. Instead, Machado called for a violent coup via a statement published a week after the election.

“We appeal to the conscience of military and police officials to put themselves on the side of the people and of their own families … the top brass is aligning itself with Maduro and his despicable interests,” read Machado’s letter calling for a coup.

Opposition called for a violent coup a week after the election

Cyberattacks on Venezuela’s Election

When Maduro initially claimed that the CNE was subject to a cyberattack in addition to its headquarters being firebombed by opposition supporters, many doubted his claim. However, it wasn’t long before hackers posing as Anonymous on social media confirmed they were behind taking down its website and even accessing the election data.

Anonymous claims to have accessed the CNE to alter the records.

Weeks later, Anonymous continued to claim they took down the CNE website  – which was still down as of this writing – and claimed it was extracting the voter data. How this helps the opposition's cause doesn’t make sense and only seems to invalidate their claims further. These actions appear to be doing much more harm than good.

Anonymous claims it is extracting Venezuela election data

These cyberattacks are only preventing the CNE from publicly publishing voter data as it is required. The Venezuelan Constitution provides for more than a 30-day delay meaning they have until August 28 to make the information public. Until then, neither the public nor the opposition has anything to validate either side's claims as the Supreme Court did on Thursday.

Anonymous continues validating Maduro’s claims of a cyberattack on the CNE

Many in the U.S. lack even a basic understanding of how Venezuela’s elections work and this leads to much misinformation that comes from the Department of State, the news media, and countless social media users. Understanding the timeframes and processes set aside to validate and confirm election results points to dubious demands set by outside entities such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken who declared González the winner only to later back off.

Opposition Refused to Acknowledge the Results Months Before

It’s worth noting that Machado and González both refused to sign a declaration saying they would acknowledge the election results months before – like something straight out of the Donald Trump playbook. And like Trump, they were crying ‘fraud’ from the get-go. If you follow Venezuelan politics and the myriad of failed U.S.-backed coups over the last 25 years, you would recognize that this is precisely the script from many different attempts.

Opposition candidate Edmundo González refused to sign a declaration acknowledging the results of the election in June

There are many reasons to doubt the opposition’s claims of victory. From their suggestions of fraud months before a single ballot was cast (without evidence) to their attempt to circumvent the electoral system, the State Department backing them up is of no consequence considering its propagandist and problematic history. That they suggested Maduro lost before seeing any authenticated evidence only further validates that idea.

Looking back to August 2004 – among several other instances – we can see that Venezuelans went to the polls to decide whether to reelect Hugo Chavez. While the U.S. and opposition candidates cried foul and claimed Chavez’s reelection was fraudulent, it took the Carter Center and other independent observers nearly a year to determine that those claims were baseless. 

Although the Center bears former president Jimmy Carter’s name, it now seems to act at the behest of the U.S. government as evidenced by declaring the most recent election fraudulent just one day after the results were announced by the CNE. A look at their partner’s page could explain this as it shows a who’s who of U.S. government-funded agencies with a problematic history of interventions in foreign affairs – particularly in Latin America.

The Carter Center based its claims on the Washington Post and Associated Press reports just as Sec. Blinken did. However, when I asked about those articles having disclaimers saying they could not validate the authenticity of the tally sheets provided by the opposition, the Department of State started walking back its claims of a González victory.

Other institutions like the Carter Center should have done the same.

The Venezuelan opposition published two versions of its tally sheets claiming victory and independent journalists found anomalies between them | Image courtesy of Diario Red in Madrid, Spain

Since then, several independent news outlets from around the world have found anomalies in the tally sheets provided by the opposition indicating possible fraud. This signals why the opposition ignored the summons by Venezuela’s Supreme Court. Manipulating voter data and trying to steal an election is a criminal act in any country. This revelation could also explain why the Department of State began seeking safe passage for the opposition to leave the country.

“... we call on Venezuela, as a state party to the Caracas Convention on Diplomatic Asylum of 1954, to comply with its provision by issuing the safe passage that will allow the six asylum seekers currently residing in the official residence of the Republic of Argentina to safely leave Venezuelan territory,” reads an August 16 statement from the Department of State.

Otherwise, it looks like they might be going to prison for a long time.

*The Department of State did not respond to a request for comment on the findings by Venezuela's Supreme Court or potential fraud found by independent journalists

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I’m a freelance writer and journalist for The Antagonist Magazine and Unicorn Riot. Find me on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Threads. To support my work become a paid subscriber or donate on Venmo, PayPal, or CashApp