Caracas Chronicles

Over at Foreign Policy’s Transitions blog, I lay out the reasons why Capriles has a case. My main point:

One has to wonder: How could chavistas get away with this? The explanation, according to Capriles, lies in the fingerprint scanning machines. According to him, these machines allow anyone to vote, regardless of whether the fingerprint matches the records. He notes that the software governing the machines was not audited prior to the election — because the CNE refused to allow such an audit.

When you combine questionable high-tech voting machinery with a government that loosely hands out ID cards, buses people to voting centers using government vehicles, intimidates public workers into supporting the government, and uses an electoral registry that includes tens of thousands of dead voters, it’s not too difficult to see how the vote could easily be inflated in favor of the ruling incumbent.

All Capriles wants is a full audit: of machines, ballot boxes, voting notebooks, fingerprint machines, and that the underlying codes for all the procedures be studied and tallied against one another. In centers where there is a serious mismatch, the votes should be voided and, perhaps, repeated.