Further evidence supports the election results published by the Venezuelan opposition

The following text was originally published in Spanish by Cazadores de Fake News as part of the La Hora de Venezuela initiative and you can read it Here

• Some of the results announced outside polling stations on July 28 and recorded on video correspond exactly to the results published on resultadosconvzla.com.
• Users also shared photos of counting sheets from polling stations declaring Maduro the winner, with numbers matching those recorded on the website.
• Some videos show numbers that do not exactly match those on the website, but the slight discrepancies are often due to human error.
• These numerous hits call into question the government's accusation that the documents published by the opposition on the website were fake.

Since the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Nicolás Maduro the winner of the presidential election at midnight with 51.2% of the votes cast, the voting results have become the cornerstone of political debate. The Venezuelan opposition, represented by the Unity Platform (PUD), refuted this result by publishing the vote count on a website that presented detailed data from over 80% of polling stations. This was backed up by ballot papers collected and scanned by opposition witnesses, which showed that candidate Edmundo González Urrutia received more than 7.3 million votes, or 67% of the total.

The reaction of the media and the public to the publication of the results and ballots on resultadosconvzla.com prompted the government to react. It began to construct a story to discredit and criminalize the content of the website. Through a series of accusations, the initial demand – to ask the CNE or the ruling party (PSUV) to publish their ballots for independent verification – was delayed.

The large gap between the website's data and the CNE's unverifiable results raised doubts among regional leaders, election observers, academics, journalists and data analysts around the world. In addition to condemning the lack of transparency in the electoral process, it also highlighted the weakness of the government's arguments against the results published by the opposition.

“Not even with an extraordinary level of organization, conspiracy acumen, and financial strength could a fraud have been perpetrated that produced the data released by the campaign without leaving traces in the paper trail – traces that have not surfaced by the time this article is completed.“, concluded a report signed by Dorothy Kronick, assistant professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

The legitimacy of results without clear support from the electoral authority and control by the Venezuelan people is being debated. Therefore, it is essential to verify the veracity of the results published by the opposition on the Internet.

I know what happened on July 28

“Maduro did not win. He lost in polling stations where the government had never lost, like in my case. I know this because I was there when the results from my polling station were announced (…)”, said one of the many social media users who were present at their respective polling stations for the final count.

The presence of citizens documenting the entire process from their polling stations ensured a steady flow of information through instant messaging, social media posts, images and videos. This created a digital footprint that – together with the ballots published on the website – reveals the government's attempt to obscure reality through disinformation and propaganda. In some cases, even some eyewitnesses doubted what they themselves had experienced.

“A few days ago I almost slapped myself. I thought, 'Did this really happen?' Was I part of a lie? For a moment I doubted. It only lasted a few seconds, but then I said to myself, 'Wait, you were there, this really happened,'” said an eyewitness, reflecting on how propaganda and disinformation can shatter people's perception of reality. Then she added, “Yes, it is possible for someone to be convinced that what they experienced is a lie.”

Since the night of July 28, hundreds of testimonies have been circulating on social media from people who witnessed first-hand what happened in their polling stations. Not only have written testimonies, tweets and conversations been shared about the witnesses' experiences on July 28, but dozens of photos of counting sheets taken as people leave the polling stations have also been taken. These photos support – at least in part – the authenticity of the results displayed on the website set up by the Venezuelan opposition.

In addition, numerous videos were released showing the results as the polls closed. These were recorded by voters who captured the moment the results were announced. In some of these videos, the announcers of the results mentioned both the name and location of the polling station and the total number of votes obtained by the two main candidates in that electoral situation: Nicolás Maduro and Edmundo González Urrutia or their parties. In other cases, witnesses counted the votes from each polling station live in front of the eyes of those present, who had waited for hours outside their polling station to secure the votes and document the moment the results were announced on video.

Are the citizen numbers real?

Fake News Scammers They compared 50 videos shared on social media that tracked data they claimed to have announced, including results, names and locations of various polling stations, and compared them with the data published on resultadosconvzla.com. Additionally, keyword searches were conducted on 25,073 scanned ballots – extracted from the website – using a freely accessible collection of ballots created in PinPoint, an AI-based tool from Google Journalist Studio.

In the group of videos analyzed, the PUD candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, emerges victorious in every announced result, overtaking the PSUV candidate, incumbent Nicolás Maduro.

Of the 50 videos analyzed, 18 correspond exactly to the results announced by the witnesses and the data published on resultadosconvzla.com. These 18 audiovisual contributions – 6 of which were recorded in Barinas, the home state of Hugo Chávez, considered by the PSUV as the “cradle of the Bolivarian Revolution” – reflect the results from 40 polling stations in different electoral centers and states.

In 9 of the 50 videos analyzed, the results are announced publicly in the presence of Plan República military personnel or even directly by them. Plan República is a military operation carried out during every electoral process in Venezuela and aims to maintain order and security in every election.

Most of the videos were recorded outside polling stations and during the night, which in some cases made it difficult to read the results, some of which were calculated live by those present and directly on the printed ballot papers.

In a video recorded in front of the Monagas Kindergarten in Maturín, Monagas state, the person reading the ballots lists the number of votes Nicolás Maduro received, party by party. Although the video shows that the ballots are identical to those on the website, the person reading the numbers makes a mistake on one number and someone adds the total incorrectly, getting 120 votes instead of the 190 recorded on the website. A similar problem occurs in 9 other videos, where the counts do not exactly match the numbers on resultadosconvzla.com to varying degrees.

The results read at a polling station in Marutin are consistent with the corresponding result published on resultadosconvzla.com, although the total results announced in the video are different. In most cases, discrepancies can be explained by simple human error, since many of the recordings were made informally and in front of a crowd waiting for the results to be announced.

In other videos, it was not even possible to hear the number of votes for Edmundo González due to the uproar of the crowd that arose before the witnesses announced the result in favor of the opposition candidate. In 23 other videos – in which the result was also in favor of the opposition candidate – the corresponding ballot could not be found because the polling station was not indicated.

The counting sheets for X (Twitter)

The phenomenon of citizen verification and open data also extended to X (formerly Twitter), where photos and videos of ballots shared by users on election night were found, providing another opportunity to verify the information on the ballots uploaded to the PUD's website.

On July 30, electoral journalist Eugenio Martínez posted on his X account calling on citizen observers from across the country to create a shared thread to compare photos of their polling stations' counting sheets with those posted online. Hundreds of Venezuelans participated, vouching for the veracity of the results or sharing the counting sheets from their respective polling stations hosted on the website, although only 35 of them responded to Martínez's initial request.

Fake News Scammers checked every single tweet that contained images of printed count sheets as well as photos or verification videos. Of the 35 posts with results, only three showed a majority in favor of Nicolás Maduro.

For example, one of the tweets analyzed posted three ballots from UE Distrital Preescolar La Libertad, a public school in the 23 de Enero parish in the Libertador district of Caracas. The ballots posted on X for this polling station match exactly those uploaded on resultadosconvzla.com: 703 votes for Nicolás Maduro and 692 for Edmundo González. Both candidates received approximately 48% of the vote in an educational center in a traditionally pro-Chávez area.

In contrast, Edmundo González Urrutia won in the remaining 32 polling stations. For example, an example of a polling station from polling station number 2 of UE Mesa de Julia, another school in the Tucani parish of the Caracciolo Parra municipality in the state of Merida, shows 407 votes for González Urrutia against 98 for Maduro. A similar difference in votes can also be observed in the rest of the publications.

“Polling stations 1 and 2 of my polling station match exactly the information published on the website. The same results“ assured the X user who posted the pictures.

Despite the government's efforts to discredit the ballots released by the opposition, videos and photos taken on July 28, amidst citizens' euphoria, largely match the results released online. This visual evidence reinforces the experiences of those who claim to have witnessed these results and refutes government allegations that the ballots and results released online are fake.

In a context like that of Venezuela, where the government seeks to impose its views through propaganda and disinformation, the demand for transparency remains strong, while a significant part of the voting population continues to question the official version of events.