Caracas Chronicles

Quico says: Ojo Electoral, a Venezuelan elections monitoring NGO, posted observers at 337 randomly chosen voting tables (mesas de votación) spread out over 22 out of Venezuela’s 24 states.

Check out their preliminary monitoring report in Spanish.

Key points:

1. Ojo Electoral’s quick-count of automated tally-sheets (actas de escrutinio) had Chávez at 61% and Rosales at 37%.
2. The mandated procedure to randomly select which mesas would be audited on the spot was followed in 97% of relevant polling stations.
3. The on the spot audits Ojo observed showed Chávez at 61% and Rosales at 38%.
4. There were pro-Chávez witnesses at 95% of the audits and pro-Rosales witnesses at 92% of them. Witnesses for both candidates attended 90% of the audits, and members of the general public saw 62% of the audits Ojo monitored.
5. There was no discrepancy between the automated tally and the audited tally in 64% of the mesas they observed.
6. In the other 36%, discrepancies were small and tended to cancel each other out rather than benefiting one candidate systematically.
7. Formal objections (impugnaciónes) over the audit results were lodged in just seven out of the 337 mesas Ojo observed. Three of those complaints were raised by pro-Chavez representatives while the other four were raised by opposition representatives.

The report closes with a pledge to release a more detailed final report soon.