Caracas Chronicles

In case you’ve been living under a rock, elections are this Sunday! Are you ready to wet el chiquito?

Most of the action will be in person, of course. But here’s your roundup of the digital tools you can’t do without on 6D.

Before the vote

1. Get to know the people you’ll be voting for at EligeTuCandidato.org, an excellent initiative by Transparencia Venezuela. There’s a goldmine of information about the candidates, including their career highlights, proposals, promises, and whether or not they’ve taken part in a coup d’état. They also have many candidates’ Twitter handles so you can holler at them. There’s even a handy list of cara’e tabla candidates, the ones who use public money for their own campaigns.
2. Get a reminder on the voting process at ComoVotar.com, Venezuela Inteligente’s great simulator. The more familiar we all are with the process, the faster it’s going to go. Be sure to mark three ovals on the voting machine and only then press VOTE, this is the only step in which miembros de mesa won’t be able to help you!
3. Voting for the opposition, right? But are you sure you know how to pick the right Unidad card. This should be a no-brainer, but the government’s playing dirty and it’s counting on you to get confused. So, do tell everyone you know about “abajo, a la izquierda, en la esquina, la de la manito”.
4. Get in touch with fellow voters to attend the verificación ciudadana together. You can register as user at esdata.info and directly contact people in your voting center.
5. Make a list of family and friends of voting age. Call them (don’t Whatsapp, call!) and ask them how they’ll get to their polling stations. Offer help if you can.

Bonus points: join Votojoven’s Defensores del Voto initiative.

At the voting station

1. Keep calm and vote. Don’t wait for the Toque de Diana, ‘cause it might not come.
2. Remember your list? Call those people again and tell them to go out and vote! Be ruthless, spare nobody.
3. Do attend the verificación ciudadana. The machines whose paper trail will be audited have to be chosen after all of the mesas have been closed.
4. If you see something you shouldn’t be seeing, like two people behind the voting machine or voters being intimidated, make sure to take note: when, where, who was involved? Remember the voto asistido has to follow a very specific procedure, explained in this video.
5. Report any irregular activity you noticed. We recommend making the denuncia in two channels: through the MUD’s official network of activists, called La Fuerza es la Unión, and through Transparencia Venezuela’s Dilo Aquí website.

After the vote

1. Head home, get a beer (or 12) and get ready for baranda time.
2. Chill. Remember the government cannot simply steal the election and cover its tracks, the system makes numerical fraud impossible to pull off if there are witnesses. Go on, re-read at Quico’s article and go through his slides with a cold beverage in your hand.
3. Read this handy guide on what to do if the government starts blocking websites. Download it here.
4. Don’t spread rumors, however optimistic or pesimistic they may be! Let’s be patient.

Remember: call, vote, verify and report. Thank you for putting your granito de arena for Venezuela’s future.

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