It's technically possible that that was not their weed and their meth in their pants because those were not their pants. However when they have a mile-long rap sheet for selling drugs, it weakens their argument a bit.
What's the mile long rap sheet though? The group that's alleging fraud (AltaVista) is using images of printed receipts from different voting places as a sample to estimate the final vote. That group also said it's same technique resulted in election outcomes that are within 2 points or less of the announced outcome for 2021, 2018, and 2015.
This seems like a new and unique accusation for Venezuela
And the fact the gov quietly funds roving mobs of bike gangs to intimidate the populace. On top of that they completely control 10% of the Venezulas cities.
> Human Rights Watch described colectivos as "armed gangs who use violence with impunity" to harass political opponents of the Venezuelan government.[10][11] Amnesty International calls them "armed pro-government supporters who are tolerated or supported by the authorities".[12] Colectivos have attacked anti-government protesters[1] and Venezuelan opposition television staff, sent death threats to journalists, and once tear-gassed the Vatican envoy.[10] Through violence and intimidation, by 2019 colectivos increasingly became a means of quashing the opposition and maintaining political power;[9][13] Maduro called on them during the 2019 Venezuelan blackouts.[14][15]
And that in poor areas these armed gangs are directly involved in bringing people to voting stations
> Every member of a colectivo is required to bring ten individuals to vote at polls during elections.[34] Over time, colectivos became more heavily armed and their criminal activity increased.[3] A small number of groups maintain community and cultural functions; most are "criminal gangs with immense social control", who "work alongside the security forces, often doing their dirty work for them", according to InSight Crime.[6] Members can be difficult to identify because they often wear masks and do not have license plates on their motorcycles.[9]
If you have serious doubts about whether the election was fair (it wasn't,) I'd encourage you to read the whole article as a primer on how and why the election was conducted and what it might mean for Venezuela going forward.
Depends which polls you're looking at. So far, no non-US-linked pollsters have shown Maduro behind (that is, behind the US backed opposition candidate). If you look at something like Hinterlaces you get a very different picture
According to this Venezuelan news article[0], several did:
> Well-known pollsters in the Venezuelan political sphere, such as Datanálisis, Datincorp, Delphos, and Consultores 21, along with the emerging Poder y Estrategia, indicated that Urrutia had more than 50% of voting intentions.
Thanks for the article. I had to translate as my Spanish isn't very good. These seem to be the main points
> Surveys of career-marking firms in the Venezuelan political environment, such as Datanalisis, Datincorp, Delphos and Consultores 21, as well as the incipient Power and Strategy, by political scientist Ricardo Ríos, claim that the postulate of anti-chavismo accumulates more than 50 percent of the intention to vote.
> However, others, such as Hinterlaces and some practically unknown in the Venezuelan or recent data market, including Polymarket, BMI Orientation and DataViva, conclude that Maduro leads his surveys with between 54 percent and 70 percent of the preference. Another, ECSC, talks about a technical tie tipped slightly towards opposition.
> The C-INFORMA Information Coalition, made up of media teams such as Media-analysis, Cocuyo Effect, Fake News Hunters and Probox, concluded this month that 6 out of 14 firms evaluated, recently created and dubious credibility, have published 37 public opinion studies - used in a strategy - to manipulate the country's.
The main point of the article seems to be that there's a lot of misleading polling in general. Which is a fair point, but does kinda leave us outsiders in the dark
which makes all this commentary all the more appalling.
rationalism requires more than poorly-informed guesses. rationalism allows for the distinct and non-negligible possibility that surveys are gamed by manipulating the wording of the questions and/or who is asked to respond.
skepticism is more than toeing the line of whatever country you think is morally righteous
