Chavez Loses…And Admits It
Filed under: Hugo Chavez, South America, Venezuela — Jason, Managing Editor on December 3, 2007 @ 3:19 pm CET
Challenging accusations that he is a dictator-in-waiting and implicitly abandoning his earlier characterization of dissenters as “traitors”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accepted defeat in a referendum that would have granted him president-for-life status and allowed him to revoke basic freedoms.
Other less prominent features in the referendum would have targeted Venezuela’s economy and local political institutions for massive change and increased personal control by Chavez:
The defeated reform package would have created new types of communal property, let Chavez handpick local leaders under a redrawn political map and suspended civil liberties during extended states of emergency.
Other changes would have shortened the workday from eight hours to six, created a social security fund for millions of informal laborers and promoted communal councils where residents decide how to spend government funds.
Opposition leaders stopped well short of declaring victory, however, noting that Chavez retains decree powers and dominates the National Assembly. Chavez could use these powers to enact many of the rejected reforms anyway. Chavez’ willingness to use his expansive powers has already been shown time and again, most prominently when he ordered the major opposition television station in the country shut down for the crime of having criticized the president. It is also possible that the power shift rejected in this referendum could be brought back up for a new vote before Chavez’ term expires in 2012.
1 Tully
December 3, 2007 @ 4:26 pm CETOn target, Jason. This was a victory for the opposition, but not a crippling blow for Chavez. He already has many of the powers he tried to enshrine, and he has years left on his current term in which to keep working on his openly-stated goal of Prez for Life.
2 Rudi666
December 3, 2007 @ 5:47 pm CETWhat I find ironic is that Venezuela has used touch screens with PAPER RECEIPTS for years.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2004/08/19/2003199293
About the new site, where is the HTML tags shortcut buttons?
3 Jim Et Al
December 3, 2007 @ 6:05 pm CETKinda hard to get all in a lather over democracy in action huh guys? I’m sure that had the reforms passed we would be hearing something about stolen elections and tyrants never mind that we have perfectly good examples of such here in the good Ole US of A, but I digress…
Why…It’s as if Chavez was a unitary executive with his fearsome powers of decree, and his dictatorial shutting down of the opposition media, but is that really so?
Apparently RCTV was shut down because it violated some 200 times its charter and license, not because a dictatorial Chavez demanded it closed. But did that mean that RCTV was no longer a rabid anti-Chavez entity? Well NO. They now occupy a cable niche somewhere between the ‘No Spin Zone’ and ‘Hannity and Colmes.’ You see…they migrated to a place where there a few standards, no governmental oversight, and few questions asked. In other words…a perfect conduit to their targeted audience. How sweet is that?
So A fair and objective reading of how RCTV came to dwell within cable land would note that the delicensing actually followed a procedure that would parallel the one we have here in this country if the one in this country were enforced for the good of the public and not for the corporate bottom line…
4 Jason Steck
December 3, 2007 @ 6:34 pm CET“Good of the country” according to whom, Jim? That’s the problem — the term is inevitably defined by those currently in power and used to suppress political dissent. Because they have been so explicit in announcing their vendettas, I have no illusions about how your fellow travelers would like to shut down conservative talk radio for “the good of the country”. Just because you agree with it doesn’t mean that it is not repression, however. I don’t think that you can claim to support free speech unless it includes speech that you think is “bad”.
Rudi, I don’t care for paper receipts because they destroy the secret ballot. Voters can be ordered by union bosses or other bosses to show their receipt to demonstrate that they voted the “correct” way. Those who don’t show the “correct” receipt can be punished in ways that are tough for the government to monitor or prevent even if it wanted to.
5 Tully
December 3, 2007 @ 8:22 pm CETApparently RCTV was shut down because it violated some 200 times its charter and license, not because a dictatorial Chavez demanded it closed.
And you pulled that flat-out lie out of what apologetics organ, and you believe it why? RCTV was shut down after Chavez and the government explicitly and publicly accused RCTV of supporting the coup attempt against Chavez in 2002, and explicitly cited that as the reason for yanking their broadcasting license. Chavez and crew then confiscated RCTV’s equipement and facilities for their own use in launching their new government channel, TVes.
You don’t have to take my word for it. You can read the newspaper accounts of the time that report the actual events, including Chavez’s public announcement of why he was doing it, if you don’t trust such uber-rightwing sources as Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd, etc.
6 Tully
December 3, 2007 @ 9:20 pm CETRudi, they’ve had the capability for some time, but it hasn’t been extensively used in a transparent fashion. In the 2004 election, for example, the “random” audits were conducted only at polling places designated by the Chavez administration. Only 150 polling desks were checked. This time around a full 54% are being checked. THOUSANDS of polling places. And this time around, there are indpendent observers getting the primary electronic results from CNE to compare to both the paper ballots and the overall totals reported. In addition, pollwatchers had “Hot Tally” counts of the number of voters at almost all of the polls to check against the number of votes reported.
That’s some serious transparency. It still can’t eliminate the most common and effective methods of on-site poll-rigging (poll-packing and double-voting) but it’s a major step that will show any major discrepancies.
As one of the Venezeulans observed, they don’t need to speculate, they have the Hot Tally sheets and the doublechecks and calculators. It’ll take them several days, but any major diddling will be apparent.
7 Rudi666
December 3, 2007 @ 9:47 pm CETJason - the paper receipt could be used as a receipt and then scanned and replaced with a brief receipt. Your ATM receipt doesn’t give a detailed financial record of your bank account. If the receipt is, say an encrypted barcode that poll workers read for voter tally, and then a brief receipt is given to voters with say name,date, voter count and precinct, no fraud would exist. But in the US we have NO receipt. Touch screens could be combined with optical scanners in this regard.
8 PatHMV
December 3, 2007 @ 10:01 pm CETI would have no problem using the touchscreen to generate the official ballot, which the voter leaves in a box in the secret voting booth. There is absolutely no, zero, need for a receipt of any sort leaving the voting premises.
The problem with the touchscreen-to-printout-to-optical-scanner route is, of course, what happens if and when the printer (or some other component) breaks or runs out of consumables. A thermal printer should be reliable enough to solve most of those problems, you’d just have to be sure to equip each machine with a large enough roll to ensure more than enough paper for every single voter who might possibly vote on that machine.
9 Tully
December 4, 2007 @ 12:03 am CETThe receipts generated in Venezeula do not leave the polling place with the voter. The voter places them in a dropbox before exiting. They do say on the face of them what vote was registered so that the voter can confirm for themselves that they accurately reflect their vote.
Both the number of votes in the dropbox and whom/what they were cast for should, in theory, match completely, and those totals should also match with the electronic totals reported to the election agency, making it theoretically a completely transparent auditable system. Any diddling would show discrepancies between the machine totals as shown at the poll, as matched at the poll with the paper ballots, and as transmitted to the election agency.
Jason noted the major problem involved with the system design, namely that the “receipt” ballot give to voters could be examined by another party for coercive purposes. That could be avoided by design, by placing a dropbox in each booth. There would be an increased chance of discrepancies between machine count and paper count due to people perhaps taking their “receipts” with them. As is, it’s an exit ticket to confirm that a vote was cast. Used that way there should be very few discrepancies in the machine/paper tally on site.
10 PatHMV
December 4, 2007 @ 12:26 am CETEven most U.S. paper ballots don’t have drop-boxes in the booth itself, do they, Tully? I’m not that familiar with the process (Louisiana has used machines as long as I’ve been voting), but from what I’ve seen on TV, you go punch the card or mark the circles or whatever in a booth, then walk out of the booth and place the ballot in the sealed box. While that allows for some potential intimidation, such would have to be done in full view of the poll watchers at each polling place. If they’re in on it, then there’s really nothing to stop the goons from going in to the booth itself, anyway.
By having them take the paper ticket out of the booth and place it in a sealed ballot box at the polling place (in full view of the watchers), you can help make sure that the voter doesn’t accidentally take the paper receipt with them.
11 Tully
December 4, 2007 @ 6:13 am CETThat’s exactly what they do, Pat. My point was just that you conceivably COULD avoid the possibility of at-poll intimidation and still keep that paper receipt in use. But people being people, you’d be gauranteed to have fewer receipts than votes, as some folks would tuck that receipt into their pocket just like an ATM receipt on sheer reflex. Or just to be a pain, or because they’re paranoid, etc.
Using it as an “exit ticket” gives great audit, but enables potential at-poll intimidation. TANSTAAFL.
12 PatHMV
December 4, 2007 @ 6:37 am CETRight. But if you’ve got at-poll intimidation, then you’re very close to allowing the government soldier to go into the secret ballot booth any way. I think the risk of using it as an “exit ticket” (walking directly from the booth to the ballot box) is worth taking to make the match between the computer numbers and the number of receipts in the box as close as possible. If you’ve got soldiers or party officials demanding, in the polling place itself to see the secret ballot, then you don’t really have a free election going on at all to begin with, and all the procedures in the world aren’t going to produce a real, honest vote.
Besides which, that method is inherently available with old-fashioned, low-tech paper ballots, so using the touch-screen plus print-out is not adding any to the risk from the traditional methods.