Would you accept an audit conducted behind closed doors, which for unknown reasons did not include the electoral notebooks uniquely identifying each voter, for an election that had more than 3,200 irregularities[1] including instances of individuals attempting to vote multiple times? I wouldn't, and I'm not sure Jimmy Carter would either.
The audit was a public act where participated all the parties, with the curious exception of the one who solicited it. It was open to the public, and filmed. People around the world was invited and witnessed it.
The electoral notebooks were audited twice. The first time before the October 2012 elections and the second one before the 2013 elections. In both case, the opposition parties approved the process. Now they are asking for a new audit of the used notebooks, one not supported by the law. They only asked for a new audit to try to keep alive their "protest".
Those 3,200 "irregularities" are anonymous, unsubstantiated, and in many cases patently false reports made in an opposition website. Some examples included "Ms. Mary, a witness from the government party didn't assisted to the process the day of the election", "An electronic machine didn't work". And you have the "grave" accusation like opposition witness expelled of the voting centers at gun point. The only problem is that there's no support for those accusation. No police report, no video, no witness willing to swear before a court of law. Or you have an accusation, like the one made by Capriles in public tv that a voting center had more votes that voters... if you count all the votes in the building but only the voters of one station poll in the building.
These kind of irresponsible denounces will be laughable and those who spread them condemn to the public ridicule if the media would do its job. Instead, they have been keeping repeating the number of (alleged) denounces without spending one second in their substance. For god's sake! The denounces officially presented to the electoral council were a printing of a powerpoint presentation devoid of any actionable piece of information that could be used to investigate them.
What good is the fact that the notebooks were audited before the last elections? The whole point of including them in the audit process is to fully ensure that each vote is valid and tied to a unique individual, not simply verifying whether an anonymous ballot was cast one way or another. The CNE can but doesn't want to include the notebooks, and the excuse is that the law doesn't require them to.
As far as the irregularities, my point wasn't they should all be automatically taken seriously, but certainly it should be within the CNE's interest to try to dispel some of the more plausible accusations such as voters attempting to vote multiple times under different identities.
> Nothing like real data. The US has over three times more immigrants than any other country.
That doesn't take into account the population of the US. Relative to other countries, the US does have lots of foreign-born population, but is far from being the one with more immigrants.
> I'm completely against the policy, but it's not a violation of the agreement.
That is not clear. EU officials say that it is indeed a violation of the agreement: “The measures adopted today by the Swiss government are contrary to the agreement on the Free Movement of Persons, since they differentiate between groups of member states.”
If I don't know whether my laptop has been stolen or simply forgotten in some coffee house but I accuse you of taking it because I don't like your politics, that makes me a liar.
And that has no relation with what we are talking about. If the Swiss government doesn't follow the written rules of the agreement, it is in violation of them. Saying so doesn't make one a lier.
