US embassy cable - 04CARACAS2705

C O N F I D E N T I A L  CARACAS 002705 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
NSC FOR CBARTON 
USCINCSO ALSO FOR POLAD 
STATE PASS USAID FOR DCHA/OTI 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/12/2014 
TAGS: PGOV, KDEM, PHUM, VE 
SUBJECT: ELECTORAL COUNCIL'S SECOND AUDIT BACKS AUGUST 15 
RESULTS; OPPOSITION WORKING TO DOCUMENT FRAUD ALLEGATIONS 
 
Classified By: CDA Stephen G. McFarland for Reason 1.4 (d). 
 
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Summary 
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1. (C) Carter Center and OAS representatives found no merit 
in the arguments made by the opposition that the GoV 
committed fraud in the August 15 presidential recall 
referendum.  OAS/TCC reps are convinced the audit of 150 
voting tables completed on August 21 was sufficient to 
conclude that the alleged fraud was improbable.  Gaviria said 
the OAS would be willing to review any proof of fraud that 
the Coordinadora finds.  The Coordinadora Democratica and the 
NGO Sumate reject the observers' conclusion and called for 
further investigation of the results to clear up doubts.  End 
summary. 
 
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Carter Center Backs Up Audit 
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2. (U) OAS SYG Cesar Gaviria and the Carter Center's Jennifer 
McCoy told reporters August 21 that the results of the August 
19-21 audit of 150 voting tables were compatible with the 
results the National Electoral Council (CNE) had announced. 
Asked by reporters about the opposition's allegations of 
fraud, Gaviria and McCoy answered that no evidence of fraud 
had been found in the audit.  The opposition alleges that 
President Hugo Chavez and his supporters committed electronic 
fraud, involving the use of algorithms to manipulate the 
results (septel). 
 
3.  (C) Carter Center technical representative Edgardo Mimica 
explained to poloff August 21 that for the audit the CNE had 
drawn a random sample of 150 of the 12,000 voting tables, 
encompassing 354 voting machines.  The CNE selected the 
sample using its own program and reviewed by the Carter 
Center.  Mimica called the sample was statistically valid 
(nearly 20,000 machines were used in all).  Once the tables 
for audit were identified, Carter Center and OAS observers 
were on-site at 22 regional depots to watch Venezuelan 
military officers find the corresponding boxes with the vote 
receipts from the table in question.  Observers had to resort 
to 28 alternate tables where the boxes had been damaged or 
could not be readily located. 
 
4.  (C) Observers accompanied the boxes to Caracas where CNE 
officials conducted the audit, by counting the paper receipts 
and comparing the results with the tally sheets emitted by 
the voting machines, in the presence of OAS and Carter Center 
observers.  They also made sure the papers and tally sheets 
matched the electoral register which voters signed.  Paper 
receipts had to be separated by machine because most tables 
had only one box for depositing the paper receipts.  When the 
count was off, they pulled boxes from accompanying tables. 
One box, for example, was 50 "no" votes short of what was on 
the acta; they resolved it by finding a second box that had 
been used (which poll workers had accidentally mislabeled). 
Mimica said the audit revealed the voting machines varied 
from the paper receipts by only 0.75 votes per machine. 
(Note:  The Coordinadora chose not to participate in the 
audit as opposition leaders were not sure the study would 
address all of their concerns.) 
 
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Carter Center Recounts Tabulation Drama 
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4. (C) Mimica told PolOff he was present in the CNE control 
room just after midnight on August 16 when CNE Director Jorge 
Rodriguez invited select international observers to witness 
the tabulation around midnight.  He said Rodriguez stood at 
the door and personally vetted each observer.  Mimica was 
allowed to pass, but he first had to give his fingerprints. 
CNE Directors Mejias and Zamora were present. 
 
5.  (C) Rodriguez made a quick speech and then asked a 
 
 
general for the envelope with the security key, according to 
Mimica.  Rodriguez opened the envelope and entered the code 
to instruct the server that had received transmissions from 
the voting machines to run the tabulation program loaded on a 
second server.  A few moments later, the total showed that 
Chavez had won.  The calculations took a few seconds, said 
Mimica, and the results stunned most of those present. 
Mimica said it was as if a bomb had exploded.  CNE director 
Zamora, he said, turned white.  Mimica said Smartmatic 
President Antonio Mugica, whose company provided the 
electronic voting system, was visibly shocked and asked 
whether the results were confirmed by Carter Center's quick 
count.  Mimica said he declined to respond because he did not 
have results yet, but thought it unethical to tell 
Smartmatic.  Mimica said Mugica would "receive the academy 
award" if his surprise at the results was an act. 
 
6.  (C) Mimica suspects Rodriguez knew the results before the 
dramatic moment and was making a dramatic show of Chavez's 
victory in the presence of Carter and Gaviria.  No observers 
had been allowed in the room all night, he said.  He 
speculated that it was possible for Rodriguez to have entered 
the code and seen the results, then reset the second server. 
Alternatively, he posited, Rodriguez could have queried the 
backup control room at the Banesco building.  Mimica said he 
thought it likely Chavez already knew the results before 
Rodriguez mounted his show. 
 
7.  (C) Mimica does not believe there was fraud.  He did not 
think it possible to re-program the machines remotely (they 
are two-way because the machine has to handshake with the 
server).  He confirmed that the machines were only plugged in 
to transmit the results, which took only a couple of minutes 
at the most.  He did, however, credit Comando Maisanta 
technology chief Nelson Merentes' manipulation of the process 
with the Chavez win.  Mimica, who was the liaison with 
Maisanta during the campaign, said he met with Merentes at 
least six times.  Merentes bragged beforehand that he had 
done a study on how to win the election and had extremely 
detailed information on the voting records and tendencies of 
every pueblito.  Mimica noted that Merentes had been able to 
influence the CNE on multiple occasions to make rules that 
benefited Maisanta's strategy, for example, trying to 
disqualify any poll worker who had signed the petitions in 
favor of the referendum.  When it became apparent it was too 
late to dump the workers and train new pro-Chavez ones, 
Merentes focused on changing local electoral boards which 
then gave Chavez supporters control over them.  Mimica made 
clear that Merentes' manipulation was designed to slice off 
opposition votes:  it may have been highly unethical, but it 
did not rise to electoral fraud. 
 
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OAS Convinced of Chavez Win 
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8. (C) OAS chief observer Edgardo Ries told Poloffs August 22 
he is sure no fraud had been committed.  Ries, who has 
observed several recent elections in Venezuela, said this one 
was "the most transparent" in comparison to others under 
Chavez's administration, and certainly better than the 1998 
election when Chavez won the first time.  There were many 
"unjust but not illegal" maneuvers by the GoV, he said, but 
they did not need to steal the election.  He said it is 
"improbable" that the GoV was able to fool the random 
selection of boxes audited by OAS/TCC by replacing contents. 
He asserted that the GoV would have had to find all the 
infected boxes (amounting to 1.5 million votes), count them, 
and then replace the "si" votes with the appropriate amount 
of "no" votes. 
 
9.  (C) Ries said the August 19-21 audit settled the charge 
that someone had tampered with the machines because the 
random check of the paper receipts found no inconsistencies. 
He also said it was improbable the military would have had 
time to change the contents of the boxes in the three days 
between the election and the audit.  He discounted opposition 
allegations that algorithms to change the results were 
 
 
imbedded in electoral software, saying that such 
manipulations would have been revealed by the audit.  The 
sample for the audit, he said, was drawn from the universe of 
nearly 20,000 machines.  It was not, however, a stratified 
sample, which would have broken the universe down into sub 
units -- states -- and then selected randomly among them. 
Two (unspecified) states, therefore, were not covered. 
 
10.  (C) Ries asserted that there was no computer hacking 
because the system because the voting machines were not 
inter-connected and only connected to the CANTV dedicated 
telephone network for a short period to transmit data.  He 
dismissed opposition exit polls that showed a strong 
opposition lead as unscientific because interviewees are not 
selected by social class.  Ries concluded that this election 
was the "most transparent" one he had seen in Venezuela. 
 
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Coordinadora Establishes Fraud Commission 
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11.  (C) To document and back up its allegations that fraud 
was committed in the August 15 referendum, the Coordinadora 
Democratica has established a commission headed by 
constitutional expert Tulio Alvarez.  At the moment, 
according to Coordinadora representative Enrique Naime, there 
are two other organizations working seriously on the 
allegations -- Sumate and Gente de Petroleo (Note:  Gente de 
Petroleo's Juan Fernandez told poloff August 24 he is working 
closely with the Coordinadora commission, though he is 
getting assistance from computer experts in his 
organization.).  Naime likened it to salvagers who have seen 
a treasure ship sink and each is competing to be the first to 
find the treasure. 
 
12.  (C) Although Miranda State Gov. Enrique Mendoza spoke of 
the commission as a done deal in his meeting with Ambassador 
August 20, some important actors such as former Supreme 
Electoral Council president Carlos Delgado are not yet on 
board, according to Jorge Casado who will be acting as 
executive secretary for the commission.  Casado and Naime 
acknowledged that another problem the Coordinadora faces is 
the proliferation of fraud theories and persons attracted to 
the camera lights.  While the Coordinadora may succeed in 
clarifying the various theories and supporting the arguments, 
they said, controlling the voices is much more difficult. 
 
13.  (C) Casado said the Coordinadora's goal is to produce a 
convincing case file and present it when it is ready, not in 
reaction to some external event, e.g., the OAS meeting August 
24.  He and Naime welcomed the opening that Gaviria had left 
for the opposition when he said they would be willing to 
receive documentation of the opposition's allegations 
whenever they were ready. 
 
14.  (U) Sumate representatives Alejandro Plaz and Maria 
Corina Machado told reporters August 23 that they were not 
trying to prove whether fraud occurred, but were trying to 
find the truth so that all doubts could be erased.  They 
restated their concerns about the process based on the fact 
the exit polls were so radically different from the results 
as announced by the CNE.  Plaz said Sumate was investigating 
hundreds of complaints it had received and was consulting 
with several national and international academics, and would 
eventually present its findings.  Machado made several 
suggestions for how to improve the transparency of the voting 
process for future votes and to restore credibility to the 
electoral process.  These suggestions included: 
--Replacing all five CNE directors; 
--Making the vote manual and conduct a recount of all of the 
votes immediately following the vote; 
--Auditing all stages of the voting process (the notebooks, 
the urns, the ballots, etc.); and 
--Ensuring international observers are given unrestricted 
access to all phases of the vote and all offices necessary to 
adequately monitor the process. 
 
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Comment 
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15.  (C) The international observers' validation of the CNE's 
audit of the August 15 results practically closes the 
referendum chapter for Venezuela.  Although Chavez opponents 
will strive to build a case to support the allegations of 
fraud, internal divisions, competing theories and doubts 
whether any one of the allegations significantly altered the 
results will hobble their efforts.  And, the opposition has 
provided no evidence, and no theory to convince the Carter 
Center/OAS observers. 
 
16.  (C) On their side, Chavez and his supporters have the 
momentum thanks to early, and now repeated, validation of the 
results by the Carter Center and the OAS.  Ironically, the 
GoV had tried to limit the role of the OAS and Carter Center 
prior to the referendum, but now touts their endorsement of 
the results as the blessing of the international community. 
Gaviria, more so than Carter, left the possibility of fraud 
open, in the sense that he said there was no evidence of 
fraud, but that the would review anything new that the 
opposition might uncover.  Many in the opposition, however, 
were disappointed with the observers' role in post-referendum 
events, feeling as if Carter and Gaviria were more in a hurry 
to leave town than to investigate fraud allegations.  The 
opposition sees similarities with what they view as the OAS's 
validation of the flawed 2000 elections in Peru.  The 
Coordinadora would have to unearth convincing proof of 
electronic fraud, elusive so far, to impact on the Carter 
Center/OAS evaluation of the referendum. 
McFarland 
 
 
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      2004CARACA02705 - CONFIDENTIAL