The Devil's Excrement

While the local media identifies the guy who found the inconsistencies in the final result of the voting as a political analyst, apparently he is a Statistician from Venezuela who lives in Mexico, where he works on political analysis for campaigns and elections.

He claims to have found in Bolivar state at least 24 of 60 centers in which two or three machines have the same number of SI votes as I described in a previous post. Moreover the same characteristics have been appearing on other states like Lara, Miranda and Zulia.

He claims he does not know why this happens, but there is a pattern with a cap and the cap varies from table to table. Once the SI reaches a value, you have two tables with that value and the third always with a lower value. Rendon, who just appeared on local TV being interviewed, said this pattern is “improbable, practically impossible”. He said this is not a doubt, this is proof. He claims the only way to find out the truth will be to recount all ballots.

He said Smartmatic may not have known about the problem. He also said what is different about his study is that he did not sample; he looked at all the centers and all of the details in each center.

Rendon said that this is a proof that something was not working properly and if the ballots agree with this, it proves nothing. It simply means it was done properly. He suggests that the President himself should request that it be checked since he would be the one that is most affected. He thinks the Democratic Coordinator should look into it and concentrate on a single message about this improbable coincidence.

While the local media identifies the guy who found the inconsistencies in the final result of the voting as a political analyst, apparently he is a Statistician from Venezuela who lives in Mexico, where he works on political analysis for campaigns and elections.

He claims to have found in Bolivar state at least 24 of 60 centers in which two or three machines have the same number of SI votes as I described in a previous post. Moreover the same characteristics have been appearing on other states like Lara, Miranda and Zulia.

He claims he does not know why this happens, but there is a pattern with a cap and the cap varies from table to table. Once the SI reaches a value, you have two tables with that value and the third always with a lower value. Rendon, who just appeared on local TV being interviewed, said this pattern is “improbable, practically impossible”. He said this is not a doubt, this is proof. He claims the only way to find out the truth will be to recount all ballots.

He said Smartmatic may not have known about the problem. He also said what is different about his study is that he did not sample; he looked at all the centers and all of the details in each center.

Rendon said that this is a proof that something was not working properly and if the ballots agree with this, it proves nothing. It simply means it was done properly. He suggests that the President himself should request that it be checked since he would be the one that is most affected. He thinks the Democratic Coordinator should look into it and concentrate on a single message about this improbable coincidence.

Yesterday a group of Venezuelans from the opposition was holding a protest in Plaza Altamira, when a caravan of Chavistas went by, began arguing with the protesters and suddenly began shooting. Eight people were injured and one lady died from the shooting. Alexandra Beech who is visiting, happened to be in Plaza Altamira when this happened, read her report. Chavez blamed the opposition for the violence and even suggested that Globovision happens to be always in the right place. Well, obviously he was badly informed, the video did not come from Globovision. In fact, there are many.

Hopefully, this will not be another case of impunity. The pictures are clear, Globovision even showed on of the individuals in a different pro-Chavez rally. The police have to find these people and convict them. No more impunity. Below all of the pictures, in all their horror and shocking reality.

Last night I said I had not seen evidence of fraud other than the exit polls, well the evidence is now growing. I have now seen evidence that certainly increases my doubts about the whole process. As I reported below, a number of stange coincidences in the results from some voting places make me and anyone with a mathematical mind suspicious. Essentially, the total number of Si’s repeat in each table. That is, a table has one, two or three machines. A surprisngly large number of tables show a pattern in which the number of SI’s is identical and the third table is different. However, the same has not been seen in the No results. The suggestion is that there was a cap placed on the number of Si’s, after which each additional Si was added to the No’s.

Right after this happened, a friend called me and told me she had been a witness at a table in Caracas and had a copy of the results as follows:

Center 38511

Operator DF 133

Cuaderno  1 (Notebook)
Votos 463
SI 356
NO 107

Cuaderno 2 (Notebook)
Votos 454
Si 353
No 101

Cuaderno 3 (Notebook)
Votos 472
SI 356
No 116

This is exactly the same pattern found in the Bolivar results and I have also seen the same in La Candelaria. In Bolivar there is also a center with all three SI’s being the same.

To add to the suspicion, now there are hundreds of people saying that the ballot itself printed by the machine had a number in front of it. In the machines 1 was supposed to be No, 2 was supposed to be Si. Well, some ballots have the code backwards! In a single center, the number switched to 1 after a certain time of the day.

Finally, I want to ask some questions very much like Caracas Chronicles did in this very well written argument:

-Why didn’t the CNE perform the audit of 190 centers as agreed and promised?

-Why didn’t the CNE do an audit of ALL the ballots. In the petition drive to have the referendum all of the people, whose signture was questioned, were forced to go back and say they did sign, ALL of them not a sample.Why only a sample of 150 centers by the same guy who argued that checking the fingerprints of 3,000 people was not significant enough? 

-Why were international observers limited in their action?

-Why was the totalization committee never assembled?

-Why is it that despite the claims during the day that abstention would be at historically low levels, abstention was at historically high levels?

-Is it a coincidence that the Si’s did not exceed the magic number of 3.75 million votes?

-Finally, this may seem to be frivolous, but Primero Justicia party Gerardo Blyde said something today that resonated with me, a Venezuelan that knows how much Venezuelans love to party and celebrate, using any excuse to that end, said Blyde: “In a country where Portugal’s victory in the recent European Cup was celebrated with people taking to the streets, caravans, flag waving and the highways being blocked, can someone explain to us why only fringe groups, the same ones going all over the city, celebrated?”. Well, that is a very good argument to anyone that saw that and wondered (like me) why the hell they were making such a big fuzz about Portugal’s victory. Brazil I understand, but Portugal?

Too many questions at this time. If they are not answered, this country will never find peace in the near future.

The Carter Center and the OAS have just announced that there will be an audit tomorrow of 150 voting centes, chosen at random. The random choosing will be done in the presence of observers of the OAS, the Carter Center, the Government, the opposition and the CNE. Then, the ballot boxes with the paper ballots will be picked up at the garrisons where they are being held. They will be taken to the CNE where in the presence of the same observers, they will be counted and compared to the result derived from the readout of the machines as signed and witnessed by those that were present in the voting centers.

It is still not clear to me whether they will check centers or “mesas”. Let me explain, each center had a number of “mesas” or tables. Each table had a number of  “cuadernos” or notebooks, where the list of voters was included. Each cuaderno voted in a single machine. But in the center where I voted, all notebooks from all tables deposited the paper ballots in a single box.

Carter was very emphatic that they trusted the results, but had requested this to dissipate any doubts. However, a reporter was very sneaky at the end and he fell for it. She asked that what assurance did we have that the ballot boxes themselves were not tampered with. He said that the was sure the military was taking proper care of them. However, there have been reports, some of them visual, that there are boxes in palces likeGovernment offices. In one case, some guy at the office said he was “guarding it” there. Well, so much for Carter’s assurance.

Two separate people on TV are reporting that in some voting centres, there are strange coincidences in the total number of Si votes. In one center with nine lists of voters, three lists had 117 SI votes, three had 127 votes and three had 133 votes. In a different center, all nine had exactly the same number of Sí votes. The theory that is being proposed is that the voting machines were programmed not to exceed a certain number and anything above was added to the No vote to make the total coincide with the number of voters. There is still now word on whether the paper ballots are going to be counted or not.