Why Venezuela’s Dec. 6 election is legitimate

On December 6, Venezuela will hold parliamentary elections to choose new deputies for the National Assembly, the country’s legislature. With heightened U.S. attacks in Venezuela, including a tightening economic blockade, the elections are of great consequence to the future of the country. In the last legislative election held in 2015, the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) lost a majority of seats in the National Assembly to a coalition of right-wing parties called the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD). This shift allowed the opposition to heighten its efforts to destabilize Venezuela and promote U.S. intervention. Central to this destabilization campaign has been the claim that the country’s democratic processes are fraudulent, and that the elected president Nicolás Maduro is a “dictator”. However, ever since the Bolivarian Revolution began, after the election of Hugo Chavez as president in 1998, Venezuela has strictly adhered to constitutional principles and a fair and transparent electoral process. Venezuela’s electoral authority — the National Electoral Council (CNE) — is one of five co-equal branches of the country’s government. It presides over one of the most technologically advanced and transparent electoral systems in the world. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter famously remarked “[…] of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” Venezuela has an electronic voting system where an individual’s ID card and fingerprints are used to determine their identity to prevent double voting. The system then prints a paper ballot confirmation that can be verified by the voter and placed in the ballot box. The voter then signs and leaves a physical fingerprint in a record book at the center they are voting at. This makes any attempt of fraud during elections extremely difficult. Read the full article here: https://www.liberationnews.org/why-venezuelas-dec-6-election-is-legitimate/