Saying the assembly will begin to govern within a week, Maduro said its first task in rewriting the constitution will be "a total transformation" of the office of Venezuela's chief prosecutor, a former government loyalist who has become the highest-ranking official to publicly split from the president. President Maduro promised that before the new constitution is implemented, it would also be the subject of a referendum. The Trump administration again promised "strong and swift actions" against Venezuelan officials, including the 545 participants in the constitutional assembly, many of them low-ranking party members. Maduro, widely disliked for overseeing an economic collapse during four years in office, has pressed ahead with the vote to create the all-powerful assembly despite the threat of U.S. sanctions and months of opposition protests in which more than 115 people have been killed. Due to plunging oil prices and widespread corruption and mismanagement, Venezuela's inflation and homicide rates are among the world's highest, and widespread shortages of food and medicine have citizens dying of preventable illnesses and rooting through trash to feed themselves. Elio Herrera, who voted in a Caracas neighborhood, called the exercise “democratic and popular.”

The vote will allow President Nicolás Maduro to replace the current legislative body, the National Assembly, with a new institution known as the Constituent Assembly that will have the power to rewrite the constitution. He said he wants the assembly to strip opposition legislators of their constitutional immunity from prosecution and indicated he is eager to prosecute many more members of the opposition parties that control a handful of state governments along with the National Assembly, providing one of the few remaining checks on the power of the socialist party that has ruled this OPEC nation for nearly two decades. Declaring the opposition "already has its prison cell waiting," Maduro added: "All the criminals will go to prison for the crimes they've committed."
Voters in Venezuela participate in an election for members of a new Constitutional Assembly, devised by President Nicolás Maduro to amend the constitution following a legislative takeover in March. Many Venezuelans question the election's legitimacy, resulting in boycotts and ongoing protests.