Venezuela’s
Electoral System
Past
& Present
After the fall of Venezuelan
dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958, the country’s major political parties
entered into an agreement known as the Punto Fijo Pact. Under the terms of the pact, Democratic
Action (AD), and the Social Christian Party (COPEI) agreed to share cabinet
positions and the control of state institutions regardless of who won the
elections. The result was that all other political parties were effectively
shut out from Venezuela’s political life. This period, which lasted until
President Chávez was elected in 1998,
“created hierarchical national organizations and relied on oil revenues
to satisfy the needs of their [the parties] major constituencies.”[1] In other words, the major political parties and
their supporters received economic benefits while other parties—largely
representing the interests of the poor-- were systematically left out. The system was famously corrupt, as the two
parties conspired to set rules that consolidated their hold on power.
The Art of Exclusion and
Acta Mata Voto (1958-1998)
Over the years, outside
political parties attempted to challenge the Punto Fijo system by running
candidates against AD and COPEI, but the system was stacked in favor of the
major parties. Third parties were marginalized and in some cases, banned
outright. In 1962, for example the government headed by Romulo Bentancourt
banned the Communist Party and criminalized membership in left wing
organizations.[2]
The voting system during
this period relied on hand counts of paper ballots, a system that became easy
for ruling powers to manipulate. AD and
COPEI officials would lead the vote count, and blatantly divided up third party
votes between themselves before adding them to the official tally. The two parties were so powerful that they
made no effort to hide this process, which was commonly referred to as “acta
mata voto,” or “the tally trumps the vote.”[3] To further complicate things the national
elections authority, responsible for overseeing elections, was a part of the
executive branch and beholden to the party in power. For this reason,
independent audits of the elections or the voter registry were never carried
out. The system contributed to widespread voter apathy in the majority of
Venezuelans who believed, credibly, that their voice would never be represented
by political leaders.
Voter Disenfranchisement
& Reform
As late as 1998 less than
half of all voting age Venezuelans were registered to vote, due in part to
apathy, but also to a system that made no effort to reach out to poor and
marginalized citizens. During the Punto
Fijo era, registering was time-consuming and difficult for the poor, who were
required to prove their citizenship in order to vote. National identification cards, required for voter registration,
were hard to come by. Birth Certificates were issued primarily at urban
hospitals, but for millions of Venezuelans born in rural areas or at home, it
would be an arduous process to prove that you were, indeed, a Venezuelan citizen.
This denied poor communities, largely made up of citizens of indigenous and
Afro-Venezuelan descent, access to the vote.
Poor and marginalized
communities were further discriminated against as a result of the location and
distribution of voting centers around the country. In cities these centers were found exclusively in middle class
neighborhoods. Voting centers located near poor neighborhoods had a much higher
number of voters assigned to them than other centers. The result was that poor
Venezuelans faced significantly longer lines on voting day. In rural areas, meanwhile, many small
communities had no voting centers at all, and prospective voters would have to
travel to larger towns, often dozens of miles away. Whether in rural or urban regions, poor Venezuelans often had to
deal with significant material obstacles in order to exercise their right to
vote.
As widespread civil unrest
began to grip the nation in the late 1980’s, AD and COPEI were compelled to
begin the process of reforming Venezuela’s political and electoral system. To start, it was decided in 1989 that state
governors would no longer be Presidentially-appointed but would have to be
directly elected by the people in open elections. A decade later, an electoral
law known as the Organic Law of Suffrage and Political Participation was passed
mandating the use of a new automated voting system. This electronic voting system was designed to address “acta mata
voto” by making the tallying process more transparent and accountable. A new elections board, less beholden to
the Punto Fijo hierarchy, was selected in 1998, just months before the
Presidential election in which Hugo Chávez came to power.
AD and COPEI hoped that
these measures would improve public perception toward them and their running of
the electoral system. In the 1998
legislative and presidential elections they also mandated citizen
participation. 300,000 registered
voters were drafted through a lottery system to serve as poll workers replacing
party members who had previously been responsible for managing voting
centers. Under this initiative party
members could only participate in the tallying process if there was a lack of
lottery selected poll workers.
International voting experts like the Carter Center, were also asked to
observe.
The Chávez Era is Ushered
In (1999-present)
On December 6, 1998 as
electoral reforms were being instituted across the country, Hugo Chávez won
Venezuela’s presidential elections and ushered in a new political era for
Venezuela. The final tally showed that
Chávez had won 56 percent of the vote. One of the priorities for the political
coalition that brought Chávez to power was to deepen the process of electoral
reform. Soon after Chávez began his first term in 1999, the new Administration
and the National Assembly moved to strengthen previous reforms and initiate new
ones with a focus on voter access and rights, security, and safeguards against
fraud.
Mision
Identidad
One of the first and most
successful initiatives to date is known as Mission Identity, or Mision
Identidad in Spanish. Initiated in
October 2003, and carried out with the help of the National Office of
Identification and Immigration (ONIDEX), Mission Identity aims to implement
article 56 of the 1999 Constitution which states:
All
persons have the right to be registered free of charge with the Civil Registry
Office after birth, and to obtain public documents constituting evidence of
their biological identity, in accordance with law.[4]
Essentially a massive
citizenship and get out the vote campaign, Mission Identity has given millions
of Venezuelans national ID cards granting them full citizenship and the rights
that come with it. Historically
marginalized communities were particularly targeted through the use of 84 regional
ONIDEX offices and 7 mobile units allowing them to reach the most remote areas
of the country. Once equipped with ID
cards, citizens were offered the opportunity to register to vote and benefit
from state subsidized services like education, housing, and health care.
During the first phase of
the program implemented in 2003 and 2004, over eight million people received
either new ID cards or updated their old ones.
From the beginning of 2005 to July 2006 Mission Identity served an
additional 10 million Venezuelans. In
addition, over 5 and a half million Venezuelans registered to vote for the
first time and over 600,000 immigrants who met the conditions for
naturalization were granted Venezuelan citizenship.[5] Currently more than half of the Venezuelan
population is registered to vote and many more have been granted the rights and
benefits of citizenship.
A New and Independent CNE
Another important reform
initiated by the Chávez administration and the 1999 Constitutional Assembly was
the creation of an independent, non-partisan body to oversee elections. Mandated by the 1999 constitution, the CNE
became a separate branch of government, parallel to the executive, legislative
and judicial branches. To ensure that
the body was not politicized, universities and civil society organizations
would now participate in the process of nominating directors. To date this new process has produced one of
the most technically competent boards ever. The current President, for example,
has more than ten years of experience in electoral issues and is a recognized
expert in issues of voter access.
Instituting Voter
Security and Transparency
Venezuela’s 1998 Organic Law
of Suffrage and Political Participation, passed before President Chávez took
office, recognized that one of the nation’s major problems was fraud and
required that elections be conducted with electronic voting machines. In recent years, the newly reformed CNE has
worked to make this a reality. The
machines are meant to standardize the way Venezuelans voted around the country
and provide a faster and more accurate vote count than manual methods. Shortly after President Chávez became president, however,
opposition parties suggested that the machines, which have been used in various
Venezuelan elections since the year 2000, could be used to violate voter
privacy and commit fraud electronically. But even some of the Venezuelan
government’s harshest critics have noted that the paper and electronic trail
produced by the machines guarantees Venezuelans a greater degree of security in
their electoral process than many citizens of the United States. Florida
Senator Bill Nelson, in a recent hearing on Venezuela, remarked that “the State
of Florida is not even doing that with a paper trail. So maybe Venezuela
will teach Florida something.”[6]
The
new CNE also invested in a unique technology to ensure that no party could
manipulate the computers in order to affect the outcome of the vote. The
source code necessary to access the machines is split into four equal parts,
which are then divided among stakeholders, including a representative from the
CNE, opposition parties, pro-government coalitions and international observers.
In order for any change to the coding of the computers to be implemented
and enable fraudulent action, each of these parties must be present and access
the machines simultaneously. For legitimate purposes, such as testing the
machines and auditing the vote, each party has access to the computers, but any
unauthorized tampering is rendered impossible. Just before the 2004 referendum, officials from the
Carter Center received a full presentation of the machines, and stated that
they were “very impressed with the presentation that we received, the security
measures that were shown to us, and the functioning of the machine that we
witnessed.”
Since
1998 international organizations and Venezuelan citizens alike have been
invited to monitor the elections. To
aid in this process beginning in 2000 the CNE improved the electronic voting
system by making it possible to fully audit the computer software used as well
as each step of the electronic voting process. Thanks to these
mechanisms, every aspect of the Venezuelan voting system has been thoroughly
audited by international election observers.
The Carter Center, European Union, Organization of America States and
others have repeatedly observed Venezuela’s elections and overwhelmingly
certified that they are free and fair and uphold the voter’s right to privacy.[7] In fact this year, under an agreement
between the CNE and participating political parties, a full 55% of the paper
receipts will be audited after the presidential vote to ensure that their numbers
match the electronic vote tallied.
Democratizing
the Voting Centers
In
the last few years, the CNE has worked intensely to guarantee that all citizens
can participate in elections with relative ease by increasing the number of
voting centers throughout the country, with a focus on low income urban and
rural communities. According to
official figures provided by the CNE, since mid 2004 the number of voting
centers has increased at a steady rate.
At the time of the August 2004 Referendum there were 8,279 voting
centers in Venezuela. By December 2005,
when the last legislative elections were held, the number of centers had
reached 9,271. Before the upcoming
elections in December, the CNE expects to have 10,500 voting centers up and
running. The geographical distribution
of these new centers has been planned to ensure that similar numbers of voters
are served at each center, roughly 3,500 voters per center.[8] Also, over the last two years the CNE has
more than doubled the amount of voting booths throughout Venezuela so as to
avoid long waits outside voting centers.
The total number of booths has increased from 12,213 in August of 2004
to 27,366 at the present date.