POLITICS | CNE finishes audit with ‘zero error’. On 7 June Venezuela’s national electoral council (CNE) said that it had finished its audit of the remaining 46% of the ballot boxes not included in a routine spot audit carried out on the night of the 14 April presidential election. The ballot boxes contain the paper receipts printed out by the electronic voting machines, which are checked and signed by voters before being deposited in the boxes, thereby serving as a double check on the voting process. The CNE said it found ‘zero errors’ and would present its final results on 11 June. Lilian Hernández, who represents the defeated opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski at the CNE, said the audit was a “pantomime” noting: “They did a verification of the machine tally and the paper votes [from inside the ballot boxes] and it’s obvious that the paper tally matches the machine tally, as it’s the machine that prints out the papers”. The Venezuelan opposition has contested the election result before the supreme court (TSJ), which has yet to respond to its petition to annul the elections on the basis of alleged fraud. Capriles lost to Nicolás Maduro, now president, by some 225,000 votes, or less than 1.5%. The opposition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática believes it has sufficient evidence of fraud to alter the result. Capriles on 9 June called on the TSJ to declare on its petition. He says he will resort to international instances if the TSJ refuses the opposition case. He also called on the opposition to turn out
en masse for the scheduled 8 December municipal elections. “We are now the majority in the country, we have to show it in the next elections”. “Fraud is defeated with more participation”, he urged.
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