The Carter Center confirmed on Wednesday that opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia was the winner of the elections in Venezuela, and that the regime of Nicolás Maduro has not presented any evidence of the alleged cyber attack inflicted on the electoral system.
"There is no evidence" that Venezuela's electoral system was the target of a cyber attack during the elections on July 28, said Jennie Lincoln, head of the observation mission from the Carter Center, who endorsed the opposition's claims of victory and requested that the will of Venezuelans expressed at the polls be respected.
Invited by the National Electoral Council (CNE) to observe the controversial elections that Maduro claimed to have won - amidst overwhelming and troubling allegations of fraud - the Carter Center ultimately certified that the elections were neither free nor transparent.
Forty-eight hours after the electoral process, the Center questioned the legitimacy of the presidential elections and stated that the elections did not meet international standards of electoral integrity, which prevents them from being considered democratic.
"The Carter Center cannot verify or corroborate the authenticity of the presidential election results declared by the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela. The fact that the electoral authority has not announced results broken down by polling station constitutes a serious violation of electoral principles," the institution said in an official statement published on July 30.
Interviewed this Wednesday by the AFP agency, Lincoln explained that "companies monitor and know when there are denial of service (hacks), and there wasn't one that night."
“The transmission of the voting data is via telephone line and satellite phone, not by computer. They have not lost data,” insisted the head of the observation mission from the Carter Center.
Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence pointing in that direction, the CNE continues to withhold detailed results and evidence indicating otherwise, claiming that the delay is due to an alleged hacking. Meanwhile, Maduro insists on denouncing a “cyber-fascist coup” by the opposition.
Lincoln recalled that the president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, "said he would publish the results table by table on the website and would provide a CD to the political parties" when he announced a first bulletin. "It is a promise that he never fulfilled," indicated the advisor of the organization for Latin America and the Caribbean.
"Despite the fact that the playing field was very uneven, the Venezuelan people went out to vote," he continued in reference to the elections. "The major irregularity of the electoral day was the lack of transparency from the CNE and the blatant disregard for their rules regarding showing the true vote of the people."
The Carter Center, Lincoln explained, has "analyzed the available numbers" alongside other organizations and universities and "confirms Edmundo González Urrutia as the winner with more than 60%" of the votes.
The opposition published on a website copies of more than 80% of the records, which they claim prove the victory of González Urrutia -representative of the leader María Corina Machado- with 67% of the votes. The CNE gave him 43% compared to Maduro's 52%.
"It's pure theater," Lincoln observed. "The government has had 11, 12 days... a very long time to show the real data from the records they received on election night," he insisted.
Finally, the head of the Carter Center's observation mission expressed skepticism regarding the developments in Venezuela and the claims of several countries about an "impartial verification of the results."
"I am incredulous, skeptical about what an international verification team could do that the witnesses have not done, who have produced the true minutes of the night," she pointed out while considering it premature to comment on the Carter Center's willingness to participate in an audit of this level.
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