Caracas Chronicles

I wasn’t aware of the details leading up to the extraordinary admission by Socorro Hernández that, yes, indeed dead people voted in Venezuela. But thanks to leading Venezuelan economist Omar, we found out how the information was unearthed. He points us to Puzkas.

Eugenio G. Martínez (aka Puzkas), a well-known Venezuelan journalist who covers the CNE beat, wanted to look into this issue. Of course, without looking at the “notebooks,” i.e., the voter rolls that tell you – after the election – who showed up to vote, it’s nearly impossible to know if a person known to be dead actually voted. The trick is that the notebooks are firmly in the hands of the CNE, and they are refusing to look into them.

What Puzkas did was clever and a half. He looked at the voter registries of those voting centers where reported participation was 100%, i.e., where according to the CNE, everyone on the notebooks showed up to vote. We know what the raw voter rolls for those centers are, because the opposition has all the voter rolls – they simply don’t know who showed up to vote.

He then crossed those data with the list of deceased persons maintained by the Venezuelan government, and voilá, zombies appeared.

Puzkas not only focused on April 14th. He noticed at least 90 dead people voted on October 7th as well.

The evidence is incontrovertible, so much so that it prompted Socorro Hernández to issue her startling admission that the Venezuelan system is not fully armored.

Hats off to Puzkas. It’s too bad that thanks to his intrepid reporting, he is apparently being banned from doing his job at the CNE.

Update: Frequent commenter amieres thinks Puzkas misread the CNE data. CNE Board Member Sandra Olbitas concurs, saying that there are no centers where 100% of registered voters actually voted. She also says that there wer eno zombie voters. She repeats the mantra – the system is blindado!

I await further clarification on this issue while you CNE nerds hash this one out.