Caracas Chronicles

The Capriles Camp is wise to measure its words, collect its evidence, and work to build a decisive case on yesterday’s irregularities with a careful, measured tone. If there was tampering, it will not be possible to hide it.

To my mind, there’s little need to worry about reports of destroyed ballots strewn by the roadside – if you manage to audit 95% of the tables and can show you’re ahead and that all of Maduro’s advantage coincidentally comes from the 5% of mesas that can’t be audited, that’s even more damaging for the government, in particular if results from unauditable tables diverge markedly from near-by audited tables.

There is no need to rush. Over the coming weeks, we need to be clinical in producing and documenting this evidence. Now more than ever it’s important for everyone to fully digest how strong a guarantee the CNE Triple-Congruence system really is. If you haven’t seen them yet, the simple explanation is below the break.

The point: all three sets of tallies are public. If they don’t match, everyone will be able to see they don’t match. It may be that they don’t care that they don’t match, but they won’t be able to hide it if they don’t match.