Hugo Chavez, Voting Fraud and freedom

Hugo Chavez may have committed vote fraud to win his recall referendum 58-42. Remember this is the same guy who tried to take the country by military coup in '92. Here is part of the case:

"...where former military coup meister Hugo Chavez won an overwhelming presidential victory and promptly closed Congress and threw out the constitution." Reason Aug/Sep

"Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has been running an authoritarian regime. By various means he has taken control of the legislature, the courts, the armed services and the police. His thugs have been intimidating and even killing the regime's opponents. The literature on this is voluminous ... he has shown no commitment to democratic principles. He sought to block the referendum by extralegal means and, having failed at that, resorted to intimidation to win it. There is no reason to believe that he would stop at election fraud." US News.com Barone

"As noted here last week there is a lot of worry about the potential for government fraud in the recall vote. Those concerns have increased as Mr. Chavez has sharply limited the number of international election observers allowed in the county. He is also harassing Sumate, an important Venezuelan civic group, seeking to monitor the vote.

Of course, there will be other "observers." As Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer noted on last week: "Among the 98 personalities [Mr. Chavez] has invited to 'monitor' the election is Hebe de Bonafini, the leader of the ultra-leftist wing of Argentina's Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a self-proclaimed human rights activist who in 2001 publicly expressed her 'happiness' about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States." Aug 15 OpinionJournal

"The opposition, understandably shocked and demoralized, insisted on a hand-count of all computer voting receipts as the only way of settling the dramatic disparity between exit polls [by Penn Schoen] that showed 58% to 41% in favor of the recall and the announced result of 58% to 41% in favor of retaining Col. Chávez. Later that morning the most important observer, former President Jimmy Carter, declared that he was shown the computer tally by government supporters and that everything seemed in order. Mr. Carter then left Venezuela, and the opposition groups that had put their faith in him to facilitate a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Mr. Carter, who was vociferous and insistent about patience, transparency and hand-tallies during the Florida recount, left Venezuela to attend Mrs. Carter's birthday party." Aug 19 OpinionJournal

"One weapon against [election] fraud is the exit poll. As Doug Schoen of Penn Schoen points out, his firm has conducted exit polls in Mexico and, just a few days ago, in the Dominican Republic, which produced results very close to the election results. His partner Mark Penn points out that the firm conducted two previous exit polls in Venezuela, both of which were on the mark....

Jimmy Carter did not remain in Venezuela long after the polling and, after a superficial look at the central counting center, pronounced the election fair and the result accurate. He could not have determined whether the counting computer was misprogrammed. Chavez had every motive for cheating: polls before the election mostly showed him under 50 percent, and he should have reasonably concluded that those not for him were against. Adjusting the count was one sure way to win.By way of comparison, Penn Schoen has no motive whatever for cheating. It is a reputable American firm in a competitive business. Over more than 20 years it has worked for successful American politicians like Bill Clinton in 1996, Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2001, Michael Bloomberg in 2001 and many others." US News.com Barone

"The [voting] machines themselves were supplied and programmed by Chavez insiders at a heavy cost to the Venezuelan state. Tellingly, they are not even voting machines. Produced by Italy's Olivetti for use as lottery terminals, they were sold to a shady government-connected outfit called Smartmatic who doubled the price and immediately resold them to the Venezuelan taxpayers for use in the recall referendum.

This was Smartmatic's first-ever involvement in electronic election machines. At the time of the deal, the company's largest shareholder was the Chavez government itself. No outside auditing of the election software has so far been effectively concluded." Johan Freitas

Of course, there are supporters of Chavez who argue that the recall referendum itself was rigged: click here to see it. I should point out that thanks to Chavez many of the Venezuelans who wanted to remove Chavez were illiterate. Still, I don't feel that, given the NYT and Carter endoresments of Castro...er, I mean Chavez, that case needs to be made by me.

As usual, it is freedom that finds itself under attack.