The forum on election fraud held today in Caracas shed light on a taboo subject. There are many aspects of the fraud, including intimidation, bribery of pollsters, and surely also bribery of the opposition, but the core aspect is shown in the image below, from Operación Libertad Venezuela. As the presentations ended and the floor was opened for questions, an opposition representative took the microphone and played down the fraud by an order of magnitude. The reaction from the 340 something in the audience was so strong that the hosts had to cut the webcast. This suggested to everyone present that the opposition is playing footsie with the dictatorship as it comes to election fraud. Either that, or they are too naïve to understand that they are being fooled.
Since 2003, the regime has changed the election system so that there is no oversight. They have also created a large number of small polling places, in remote areas, sometimes requiring day-long trips in roadless land. These new places each represent a very low population, and have only one or a few voting machines. They overwhelmingly vote for the regime. They also have too many voters in relation to the population, sometimes many times more voters than population. The voters have a large over-representation of 30 to 50-year old, who were entered as voters in adult age, as if they sprang out of the ground. These “zombie voters” have been growing ever more common every election since they first appeared in the 2004 recall referendum (where Chávez lost among the living, but won only thanks to the zombie vote).