Venezuelan Poll 'Tampered With,' Says Voting System Company

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The results of Venezuela's controversial vote to create a new legislature and give President Nicolas Maduro broad authoritarian powers were "tampered with," to change turnout figures, according to the CEO of the firm that provided the election system.

The news may support opposition charges that the results were inflated to add credibility to the vote, which established a National Constituent Assembly beholden to Maduro.

Speaking at a news briefing in London, Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said the results of Sunday's poll were off by at least one million.

"We know, without any doubt, that the turnout of the recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated," Mugica told reporters.

"We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least one million votes," he said.

"It is therefore with the deepest regret that we have to report that the turnout figures on Sunday, 30 July, for the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela were tampered with," he said.

Mugica said the company has recorded the correct figure, but would wait to release that information until a full audit is carried out.

Smartmatic, which produces electronic voting machines, started in Venezuela during the tenure of the late President Hugo Chavez. Since then, it has gone global and now serves elections in Venezuela and several other countries.

In a further statement on the company's website, Smartmatic says that the system used in Venezuela is "tamper evident."

"[It] self-reports any attempt to interfere with it. This means that the system is designed to protect the votes from any manipulation and to immediately identify and alert of such an attempt," the company says.

Venezuela's opposition and the White House have condemned the poll as a "sham election." NPR's Philip Reeves, reporting from Caracas Monday, saying that: "The election council - the electoral council in Venezuela claims that 42 percent voted. That's just over 8 million people. This is being met with derision, particularly by the opposition that says the number was closer to 2 to 3 million people."</s>LONDON (Reuters) - Turnout figures in Venezuela’s Constitutional Assembly election were manipulated up by least 1 million votes, Smartmatic, a company which has worked with Venezuela since 2004 on its voting system, said on Wednesday.

“We know, without any doubt, that the turnout of the recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated,” Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said at a news briefing in London.

Mugica said Smartmatic, which has provided electronic voting technology for elections around the world, was able to detect the overstated officially announced turnout because of Venezuela’s automated election system.

“We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least 1 million votes,” he said.

Mugica declined to directly answer whether the manipulated turnout numbers changed the result of the election, in which authorities said 8.1 million people voted.

The election of the legislative super-body has been decried by critics as illegitimate and designed to give the unpopular government of President Nicolas Maduro powers to rewrite the constitution and sideline the opposition-led congress.

Mugica said the authorities in Venezuela would likely not be sympathetic to his comments and that he had not yet passed the evidence to the Venezuela’s electoral council.

The National Elections Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to internal electoral council data previously reviewed by Reuters, only 3.7 million people had voted by 5:30 p.m. in Venezuela’s election on Sunday.

Venezuelan authorities did not respond to a request for comment on that reviewed data.</s>LONDON, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Turnout figures in Venezuela's Constitutional Assembly election were manipulated by least one million votes, Smartmatic, a company which has worked with Venezuela since 2004 on its voting system, said on Wednesday.

"We know, without any doubt, that the turn out of the recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated," Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said at a news briefing in London.

"We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least one million votes." (Reporting by Cassandra Garrison, editing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by John Stonestreet)</s>London: Turnout figures in Venezuela’s Constitutional Assembly election were manipulated by least one million votes, Smartmatic, a company which has worked with Venezuela since 2004 on its voting system, said on Wednesday.

“We know, without any doubt, that the turn out of the recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated,” Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said at a news briefing in London. “We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least one million votes.”

The CEO of the voting technology company Smartmatic says the results of Venezuela’s election for an assembly to rewrite the constitution were tampered with.

Antonio Mugica told reporters in London on Wednesday that there was a discrepancy of 1 million votes between the turnout figures announced by the government and those recorded by his systems.

Mugica said “it is therefore with the deepest regret that we have to report that the turnout figures on Sunday, 30 July, for the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela were tampered with.”

Smartmatic was a company created by Venezuelans that provided electronic voting machines used during the administration of the late President Hugo Chavez.

In recent years it has branched out to provide the same services to countries across the world, while continuing to provide support for elections in Venezuela.</s>LONDON (REUTERS, AFP) - Turnout figures in Venezuela's Constitutional Assembly election were manipulated up by least 1 million votes, Smartmatic, a company which has worked with Venezuela since 2004 on its voting system, said on Wednesday (Aug 2).

"We know, without any doubt, that the turnout of the recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated," Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said at a news briefing in London.

Mugica said Smartmatic, which has provided electronic voting technology for elections around the world, was able to detect the overstated officially announced turnout because of Venezuela's automated election system.

"We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least 1 million votes," he said.

Mugica declined to directly answer whether the manipulated turnout numbers changed the result of the election, in which authorities said 8.1 million people voted.

The election of the legislative super-body has been decried by critics as illegitimate and designed to give the unpopular government of President Nicolas Maduro powers to rewrite the constitution and sideline the opposition-led congress.

Mugica said the authorities in Venezuela would likely not be sympathetic to his comments and that he had not yet passed the evidence to the Venezuela's electoral council.

The National Elections Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to internal electoral council data previously reviewed by Reuters, only 3.7 million people had voted by 5.30pm in Venezuela's election on Sunday.

Venezuelan authorities did not respond to a request for comment on that reviewed data.

Officials said Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro plans to swear in a new assembly with extraordinary powers on Wednesday, as he moves to shore up his rule in the face of domestic resistance and international condemnation.

The 545 members of the so-called Constituent Assembly, which includes Maduro’s wife and son, were to be sworn in at a concert arena, the president’s press office said.

Assembly members will be seated Thursday in the main chamber of the now opposition-controlled National Assembly, the office said.</s>CARACAS — Venezuelan authorities tampered with votes during an election this week to pick a 550-member body to rewrite the country’s constitution, said the London-based company that provided voting software and electronic machines for the poll.

“We are convinced this is the first time there has been fraud in any election that we have been involved with,” Mark Malloch-Brown, chairman of Smartmatic, said in an interview on Wednesday. He spoke after the company disclosed that officials doctored more than one million of the 8.1 million votes the government said were cast.

The revelations from Smartmatic, which provides voting software to governments worldwide, cast further doubt over the legitimacy of Sunday’s election of a powerful constituent assembly staffed with loyalists to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The U.S. and many European and Latin American countries condemned that vote as illegitimate and conducted in an atmosphere of intimidation and human rights abuses. The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on Maduro and other top officials in recent days.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

Millennials unearth an amazing hack to get free TV: the antenna.</s>Turnout figures in Venezuela’s constituent assembly election on Sunday were inflated by at least one million votes, according to the company that has provided the country with its voting system since 2004.

“It is with the deepest regret that we have to report that the turnout numbers on Sunday 30th July for the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela were tampered with,” Antonio Mugica, CEO of Smartmatic, told a media conference in London. “We know, without any doubt, that the turnout of the recent election for a national constituent assembly was manipulated.”

“We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least 1m votes,” he continued.

The election, which took place on Sunday, was to elect the members of the “constituents’ assembly,” an illegal parallel legislature made up entirely of socialist supporters of dictator Nicolás Maduro tasked with rewriting the country’s constitution.

The electoral council president, Tibisay Lucena, claimed the turnout at 41.53 percent, approximately 8.1 million people, but opposition leaders said they believed the figure was instead between 2 million and 3 million people who had voted, while one well-respected independent analysis put the number at 3.6 million.

“Participation today will not reach the required 15 percent turnout to legitimize the result, states the constitution,” opposition leader Henrique Capriles wrote on Twitter after the result. “You failed, Maduro!”

“I’m absolutely sure that those numbers are not correct,” added Venezuelan Attorney General and former ally of the government Luisa Ortega. “What they announced was a mockery of the people.”

The vote was also influenced by a number of irregularities, including reports of intimidation and widespread violence that killed over a dozen people, while about 100 people were arrested during mass demonstrations.

Nevertheless, on Sunday evening, Maduro hailed the election as a victory, describing the poll as “the biggest vote the Bolivarian revolution has ever had in all 18-year electoral history” and arguing the result would bring “reconciliation and peace” to the crisis stricken country.

“The National Constituent Assembly is born with a great popular legitimacy,” he declared.

World leaders and international bodies have said they will not recognize the result, including Latin American neighbors including Argentina, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, and Mexico, as well as the United States, Canada, and the European Union.

On Monday, President Donald Trump placed personal sanctions on Maduro in response to Sunday’s election, which include the freezing of assets, travel restrictions, and a ban on Americans doing business with Maduro.

Meanwhile, administration officials are also considering additional sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry, which represents 95 percent of the country’s total exports.

You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.</s>The CEO of the voting technology company Smartmatic says the results of Venezuela’s election for an assembly to rewrite the constitution were tampered with.

Antonio Mugica told reporters in London on Wednesday that there was a discrepancy of 1 million votes between the turnout figures announced by the government and those recorded by his systems.

Mugica said “it is therefore with the deepest regret that we have to report that the turnout figures on Sunday, 30 July, for the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela were tampered with.”

Smartmatic was a company created by Venezuelans that provided electronic voting machines used during the administration of the late President Hugo Chavez.

In recent years it has branched out to provide the same services to countries across the world, while continuing to provide support for elections in Venezuela.</s>LONDON — Electronic voting company Smartmatic was quick to blow the whistle on electoral fraud by the government of Venezuela, one of its oldest clients, because the credibility of the company and possibly its future depended on it.

Smartmatic, whose chairman is a former deputy secretary general of the United Nations and current member of Britain’s House of Lords, promotes its technology as a way to ensure transparency and participation in elections. It has provided election technology and services to Venezuela since 2004, but never questioned the results until Wednesday.

“Even in moments of deep political conflict and division, we have been satisfied that the voting process and the count has been completely accurate,” CEO Antonio Mugica told reporters while announcing the company had determined the turnout figures for an election in Venezuela held Sunday were tampered with.

Smartmatic was created by Venezuelans to provide electronic voting machines used during the administration of the late President Hugo Chavez. It has branched out in recent years to provide the same services to countries around the world. Mugica and President Roger Pinate are both Venezuelans.

The company is part of SGO Group, headquartered in London, which describes itself as “a family of ventures” that is also working on technology to address issues such as identity verification, air pollution and government efficiency. SGO reported a profit of $10.3 million on revenues of $129.2 million in 2015, the latest figures on file at Britain’s Companies House.

Smartmatic, which says it has counted 3.7 billion votes on five continents, has a core mission to stop voter fraud. Its clients range from Belgium and Estonia to Armenia, the Philippines and Haiti.

“Legitimate elections are essential to any modern democracy,” the company says on its website.

Mugica said there was a discrepancy of “at least 1 million votes” between the turnout figures announced by the Venezuelan government and those recorded by Smartmatic’s systems. He didn’t specify whether Smartmatic’s turnout figures were one million higher or lower than those provided by the government.

While the company’s systems can identify possible manipulation, people are needed to watch for evidence of electoral fraud, Mugica said. In previous Venezuelan elections, representatives from all political parties audited the vote count. On Sunday, no representatives of the parties were present, he said.

“Based on the robustness of our system, we know without any doubt that the turnout of a recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated,” Mugica said.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro called the July 30 vote after weeks of protests fed by anger over food shortages, triple-digit inflation and high crime. The newly elected assembly will have nearly unlimited powers to install an even more staunchly socialist state.

Tensions have escalated in the troubled Latin American country since government-allied election authorities said more than 8 million people voted on Sunday. Opposition figures, who called for a boycott of the election, disputed the turnout figure, saying they estimated that 2 million to 3 million people cast ballots.

Mugica said Smartmatic announced its findings before informing the government.

“The authorities would not be sympathetic” to the company’s announcement, he said.

Smartmatic Chairman Mark Malloch-Brown is a former deputy secretary general of the United Nations and a former vice-president of the World Bank. Malloch-Brown is currently a member of Britain’s House of Lords and a member of the global board of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

Andres Mejia Acosta, an expert on Venezuela in the Department of International Development at King’s College London, said the discrepancy aired publicly suggests divisions within the government. The fact that Mugica chose to speak in London suggests the real point was to inform the outside world, rather than Venezuelans.

“The basic issue is one of legitimacy,” he said. “My interpretation is that there is an internal settling of accounts from competing groups, two different factions contesting power within the group. They are starting to speak out. By doing this, they undermine (Maduro’s) legitimacy to the outside world.”</s>CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The CEO of the voting technology company Smartmatic said today results of Venezuela's election for an all-powerful constituent assembly were off by at least 1 million votes.

Antonio Mugica said results recorded by his systems and those reported by Venezuela's National Electoral Council indicate "without any doubt" that official turnout figures were inflated.

Smartmatic was created by Venezuelans and began providing electronic voting machines in 2004 during the presidency of the late Hugo Chavez.

"Even in moments of deep political conflict and division we have been satisfied with the voting process and the count has been completely accurate," Mugica told reporters in London. "It is, therefore, with the deepest regret that we have to report that the turnout figures on Sunday, 30 July, for the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela were tampered with."

President Nicolas Maduro's government announced late Sunday that more than 8 million Venezuelans had participated in the election for constituent assembly that will be granted virtually unlimited powers. His count was put into question by at least one independent exit poll, showing turnout was less than half that number.

The claim is certain to fuel further discord over the assembly, which Maduro has vowed to use to target his foes. Opposition leaders boycotted the election, arguing voting terms were rigged to favor the ruling socialist party. Nearly 7.6 million people voted in a symbolic referendum rejecting the assembly two weeks before the vote.

The assembly is expected to be sworn into office Thursday and the opposition is calling on Venezuelans to protest.

On Monday, two prominent opposition leaders were dragged from their homes by heavily armed security agents and thrown in a military prison Tuesday, drawing condemnation from the United States and some Latin American countries. But many other nations and international organizations were silent or limited themselves to expressions of concern.
At a news briefing in London, the CEO of Smartmatic, the Venezuelan-owned multinational company that provided the election system used in Sunday's election, says the number of those participating in the poll was tampered with, off by at least one million.