Venezuelan voters residing outside the country gather after casting their votes| Photo: EFE/ Miguel Barreto
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) reported this Sunday (28) that, at around 8 am (local time, 9 am in Brasília), 95% of the 15,797 voting centers were already open, two hours after the official scheduled opening time.
The president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, guaranteed that 100% of the institution’s technical staff attended the colleges authorized as voting centers, without giving details about the presence in these locations of the so-called electoral witnesses, who represent the 10 candidates in today’s election day.
Amoroso did not provide any explanations about the centers that remained closed, nor did he comment on the allegations that circulated on social media about some anti-Chavismo witnesses who – according to them – were prohibited from entering the schools.
The centers should have opened at 6 am (7 am in Brasília) and remained operational, without interruption, for 12 hours, unless there are voters in line, in which case they will remain open until the last voter has voted, according to the regulations.
Amoroso recalled that the only requirement to vote is to present an identity card, even if it is expired, and he estimated that 1,300 were the total number of international observers who participated in the different phases of the process, which included audits before election day.
For these elections, 21,392,464 people are called to the polls, who will have 10 candidates as their options, including the current president, Nicolás Maduro, and the representative of the majority opposition, Edmundo González Urrutia.