MIAMI — A Venezuelan electoral official has denounced what he calls a “grave lack of transparency” in last month’s presidential vote in which Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner despite evidence he was trounced by the main opposition candidate.
Juan Carlos Delpino is one of five members of the National Electoral Council, or CNE in Spanish, and the only one who prior to the vote had shown a willingness to go against the wishes of Maduro’s government.
On Monday, he published on social media a letter detailing several alleged irregularities before and on the day of the July 28 election. He said polling centers were slow to report results from automated voting machines while several opposition volunteers were banished, in violation of electoral rules guaranteeing the transparent transmission of tallies to CNE headquarters.
Delpino said he was informed that the hourslong delay was caused by a supposed hacking of the CNE platform and that only 58% of results had been collected. He said he decided in protest not to join his fellow rectors in monitoring the vote-counting from the CNE data hub or attending the midnight press conference when CNE President Elvis Amoroso, a ruling party loyalist, declared Maduro the winner.
“I deeply regret that the results don’t serve the Venezuelan people, that they don’t help resolve our differences or promote national unity but instead fuel doubts in the majority of Venezuelans and the international community,” Delpino wrote.
His letter comes as Maduro doubles down on assertions he won re-election by more than 1 million votes. His government has defied calls from the U.S., European Union and even leftist allies from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to release voting records that would back such claims.
Meanwhile, the opposition has published online what it calls tallies from 80% of polling machines showing that its candidate, Edmundo González, won by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
Last week, the Venezuelan Supreme Court certified the results and said voting tallies published online by the opposition were forged. Authorities have called on González to testify in a criminal investigation over alleged attempts to spread panic in the South American nation by contesting the results.
Former diplomat González and his chief backer, opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado, went into hiding after the election as security forces arrested more than 2,000 people and cracked down on demonstrations throughout the country protesting the results.
Delpino, in an interview with The New York Times published Monday, said he too had gone into hiding.
His letter also highlighted what he called a number of irregular decisions by the CNE including a lack of meetings prior to the vote that made it difficult to set clear rules on the participation of campaign poll workers, international observers and millions of Venezuelans living abroad.