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Post Reports

The escalating fight over Venezuela's future

Post Reports

The Washington Post

Daily News, Politics, News

4.45.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It has been one week since Venezuela’s presidential election. Both sides have claimed victory – but a review of the tallies collected by the opposition paints a different picture.

In the hours and days after the election, independent observers and world leaders called on President Nicolás Maduro to publish the voting records and corroborate his claims of winning. Meanwhile, the opposition, led by Edmundo González and María Corina Machado, has collected thousands of receipts – printed voting tallies – that point to what could be the largest electoral fraud Venezuela has ever seen.

Host Martine Powers speaks with Bogotá bureau chief Samantha Schmidt about the fallout of the election and how The Post analyzed these voting tallies to determine what happened in the election. 

Today’s show was produced by Sabby Robinson and Ali Bianco. It was edited by Monica Campbell and mixed by Sean Carter. Thanks to Steven Rich, Ana Vanessa Herrero, Maria Lusia Paul, Matt Brown and Abha Bhattarai. 

Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

Transcript

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0:00.0

In Venezuela, it's been a little over a week since the country's presidential election,

0:07.8

and nothing is settled. Venezuela's president,

0:15.0

president, Nicolas Maduro, said that he won the July 28th election.

0:23.1

Two days later, he celebrated by singing a patriotic song

0:27.0

about Venezuela and its flag

0:29.0

to a crowd at the presidential palace in Caracas. But not everyone is celebrating with him.

0:38.0

A growing number of observers say, no, Maduro did not win the election. The opposition leader at Mundo Gonzales is calling

0:45.8

Madura's victory a fraud. And Gonzales is saying, the opposition will fight back.

0:51.0

will fight back. Our lucha continue.

0:54.0

And not we can sare us

0:56.0

to that the volume of the pueblo of Venezuela

0:59.0

say a repeated.

1:01.0

We spent the past few days working as a team to try to do our own review of these vote

1:07.6

tallies that have been collected by Venezuela's opposition.

1:10.9

Samantha Schmidt is the Bogota Bureau Chief for the post.

1:14.5

She reported from Venezuela on its election.

1:17.8

Along with other colleagues from the post,

1:19.6

she has reviewed thousands of vote tallies.

1:23.4

And I went through a cardboard box that had hundreds of them in Caracas and felt them and

1:30.5

reviewed them myself to be able to say these match what the opposition is posting online.

1:36.0

These appear to be legitimate and according to these records it is very likely likely that Maduro lost the election.

1:45.0

As the controversy surrounding the election continues, people have taken to the streets

...

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