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Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

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Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#211

This is a bit of an aside, but as a geopolitical news junkie, what I keep searching on Google News is: Venezuela election Lula How his government reacts is going to be a major factor. Given Lula's past dedication to Chavezism, his post-election reaction has made me hopeful for change in Venezuela. What is directly related to TFA is that both the USA and Brazil want to see the voting data. https://www.reuters.com/worl…

> Given Lula's past dedication to (sic) Chavezism Brazil has quasi-presidential system, but it's Chamber of Deputies has the actual power. In the 2000s, Lula's PT was the largest party (usually around 20-25% of the total seats) and could as such strongarm smaller leftist parties into a governing coalition with an absolute majority. Lula won the presidential election in 2022, but his party PT was the 3rd largest, and…

I am confused.

Are you arguing that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's official public stance on the Venezuelan election has no influence?

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#212
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The National Lawyers Guild twitter profile reads: "Human rights over property interests since 1937. Fighting for liberation, organizing in solidarity with radical movement leaders." https://x.com/NLGnews They are certainly not impartial.

Yeah, and Hitler said he was a national socialist. We don't need to judge truth based on the words found in random twitter bios. We can judge Maduro based on his actions- disappearing the opposition leader and permanently hiding local election tallies are not the actions of someone who trusts vindication by a fair and open system.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#214
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm not sure I understand this battle-of-experts thing happening here. The Venezuelan authorities released the vote totals. They work out to exactly 51.2% vs 44.2%. That did not happen in the real world. Could not have. We don't need the Carter Foundation to tell us these results are false. They are manifestly false.

I would say that the obvious rigging of the vote is a desired effect. Ditto for the obviously outlandish accusations of meddling by the Chilean secret service.

I think the message being sent now is: "I can rig the elections, you see it, and you can't do anything about it. I win because I say so." And his supporters see it and are happy that their leader is not a wimp.

Sr. Maduro's friend, Mr. Putin, has been sending the same message last few election cycles, when he's been running for president in umpteen time, despite any limits set by Constitution, etc.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#215

More on this. The Carter Foundation, the only impartial observers who were in Venezuela for the election, and who previously defended Venezuela's election system following Chavez's 2004 win, has called on Maduro's government to release local vote tallies, which apparently it is never going to do: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/world/americas/venezuela-...

Maduro just responded to a journalist from the Washington Post that they will not be able to show the local vote tallies now because, at this moment, the National Electoral Council is in “a cyber battle never seen before.”

I was curious to check the National Electoral Council website, to get their latest tally straight from the source...

http://www.cne.gov.ve/

And the website is currently not loading. They might simply be struggling to keep up with traffic, but being under some kind of "cyber attack" is also plausible

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#217
post #72

More on this. The Carter Foundation, the only impartial observers who were in Venezuela for the election, and who previously defended Venezuela's election system following Chavez's 2004 win, has called on Maduro's government to release local vote tallies, which apparently it is never going to do: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/world/americas/venezuela-...

[flagged]

Yeah, and Trump promised to release his tax returns. Around here, our sewage trucks have the word "Political Promises" painted on the side.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#218

Here's this re-explained with a simpler example. Imagine you have 1,000 votes. You want to show that your political party got 60% of the vote, so, you claim: My party: 600 votes Opposition: 300 votes Other: 100 votes Presto, we got a good breakdown. The people will buy it.... It makes sense that 600 is exactly 60% of 1,000, because this was an artificial example. But in the real world, we don't get 1,000 votes. We ge…

Thanks. Note to self: Next time I want to rig election results, generate a random integer between 54.2% and 54.3% of the vote and count it as the winner's vote, subtract from total pool, wash rinse repeat.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#219
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand this battle-of-experts thing happening here. The Venezuelan authorities released the vote totals. They work out to exactly 51.2% vs 44.2%. That did not happen in the real world. Could not have. We don't need the Carter Foundation to tell us these results are false. They are manifestly false.

That isn't the vote total, it is a provisional count. They're claiming "80% reported" which is already a tell that whoever is putting out the figures isn't treating them especially accurately. It is plausible that the figures are incompetence rather than malice and someone was back-calculating the number of votes from an accurate-enough percentage. Pretty unlikely though. It isn't that hard to count votes.

Sure, but the 80% cutoff on the stat doesn't change anything here. The only way to report out these numbers is to start with the two percentages and work back to them, which would make them false!

I don't think there's a way to rescue these stats. Certainly I don't think the Carter Foundation or the International NLG has anything useful to say about them.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The National Lawyers Guild twitter profile reads: "Human rights over property interests since 1937. Fighting for liberation, organizing in solidarity with radical movement leaders." https://x.com/NLGnews They are certainly not impartial.

Yeah, and Hitler said he was a national socialist. We don't need to judge truth based on the words found in random twitter bios. We can judge Maduro based on his actions- disappearing the opposition leader and permanently hiding local election tallies are not the actions of someone who trusts vindication by a fair and open system.

You're doing it too. You don't have to work this out in a chain of steps from first principles. Just look at the numbers.
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