AP review of Venezuela opposition-provided vote tallies casts doubt on government's election results

CARACAS, Venezuela — An AP analysis of vote tally sheets released Friday by Venezuela's main opposition indicates that their candidate won significantly more votes in Sunday's election than the government has claimed, casting serious doubt on the official declaration that President Nicolás Maduro won.

The AP processed almost 24,000 images of tally sheets, representing the results from 79% of voting machines. Each sheet encoded vote counts in QR codes, which the AP programmatically decoded and analyzed, resulting in tabulations of 10.26 million votes.

According to the calculations, the opposition's Edmundo González received 6.89 million votes, nearly half a million more than the government says Maduro won with. The tabulations also show Maduro received 3.13 million votes from the tally sheets released.

By comparison, updated results from the governmental National Electoral Council made public Friday said that based on 96.87% of tally sheets, Maduro had 6.4 million votes and Gonzalez 5.3 million. National Electoral Council President Elvis Amoroso attributed the delay in updating results to ''massive attacks'' on the ''technological infrastructure.''

The AP could not independently verify the authenticity of the 24,532 tally sheets provided by the opposition. The AP successfully extracted data from 96% of the provided vote tallies, with the remaining 4% of images too poor to parse.

González and opposition leader María Corina Machado said Monday that they had secured the tally sheets from polling centers nationwide and that they showed Maduro lost his bid for a third six-year term by a landslide.

The opposition first offered voters the opportunity to look up scanned copies of the tally sheets online. But following criticism and threats from Maduro and his inner circle, the campaign on Friday released its scans.

Earlier Friday, a half dozen masked assailants ransacked the opposition's headquarters in an escalation of violence after several countries called for proof of Maduro's claim of victory.

Assailants broke down doors and hauled away valuable documents and equipment in the raid around 3 a.m., Machado and González's party said. Several walls were covered in black spray paint.

The raid follows threats by top officials, including Maduro, to arrest Machado, who has gone into hiding while still urging Venezuelans and the international community to challenge Sunday's election results.

The Biden administration has thrown its support firmly behind the opposition, recognizing González as the victor and discrediting the National Electoral Council's official results. González was tapped in April as a last-minute stand-in for Machado, who was barred from running for political office.

The U.S. announcement late Thursday followed calls from multiple governments, including Maduro's close regional allies, for Venezuela's electoral authorities to release precinct-level vote counts, as it has during previous elections.

González, whose location is also unknown, posted a message on X thanking the U.S. ''for recognizing the will of the Venezuelan people reflected in our electoral victory and for supporting the process of restoring democratic norms in Venezuela.''

Maduro said during a news conference Friday that the U.S. should stay out of Venezuela's politics.

Maduro also alleged that members of the opposition ''plan to carry out an attack'' in a Caracas neighborhood near where Machado called on supporters to gather with their families Saturday. He played audio and showed an image of a purported WhatsApp chat that he said was proof of the planned attack.

He said he has ordered the armed forces to guard the neighborhood. That order could limit the ability of opposition supporters to gather, but it would not affect the planned demonstration of ruling party supporters elsewhere in the city.

There has been a flurry of diplomatic efforts by Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to convince Maduro to allow an impartial audit of the vote. On Thursday, the governments of the three countries issued a joint statement calling on Venezuela's electoral authorities ''to move forward expeditiously and publicly release'' detailed voting data.

Venezuela sits atop the world's largest proven crude reserves and once boasted Latin America's most advanced economy, but it entered into a free fall marked by 130,000% hyperinflation and widespread shortages after Maduro took the helm in 2013. More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2014, the largest exodu in Latin America's recent history.

U.S. oil sanctions have only deepened the misery, and the Biden administration — which had been easing those restrictions — is now likely to ramp them up again unless Maduro agrees to some sort of transition.

''He's counting on being able to wait this out and people will get tired of demonstrating,'' said Cynthia Arnson, a distinguished fellow at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. ''The problem is, the country is in a death spiral and there's no chance the economy will be able to recover without the legitimacy that comes from a fair election.''

Thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets Monday after the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner, and the government said it arrested hundreds of protesters.

On Wednesday, Maduro asked Venezuela's highest court to conduct an audit of the election, but that request drew almost immediate criticism from foreign observers who said the court — which like most institutions is controlled by the government — lacks the independence to perform a credible review.

Supreme Tribunal President Caryslia Rodríguez called on the candidates and their parties to provide all required documents as the court seeks to audit the results.

Maduro took the opportunity to call González ''the candidate of fascism'' and promised to hand over all the voting tallies.

Later, Maduro and his campaign manager, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez, attempted to discredit the tally sheets posted online by the opposition, arguing that they were missing signatures from the electoral council representative as well as poll workers and party representatives.

They didn't acknowledge that soldiers, civilian militia, police and loyalists of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, on Sunday blocked some opposition representatives from entering the polls, witnessing the vote, and signing and obtaining copies of tally sheets.

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