The National Lawyers Guild disputes repeated Carter Center press statements regarding the July 28 presidential elections in Venezuela. The Center issued a public statement less than 24 hours after the closing of the polls calling on the Venezuelan government to immediately publish the election results for each polling station across the country. As lawyers and scholars, we know that efforts like election monitoring must be done with care and caution, both of which the Carter Center has failed to exhibit.
It appears that Carter Center leadership has shifted to the right over the last several years, impacting its overall work in the US and around the world. The Center’s Chief Executive Officer, Paige Alexander, worked for USAID for over 15 years, now called “the new CIA.” She also sits on the southeast chapter board of the widely discredited Anti-Defamation League, which as recently as 2017 advised local police to plant undercover agents in anti-racist organizations in the US. A recent Center for Constitutional Rights report demonstrated how they use counterterrorism laws to target Palestinian solidarity organizers in the U.S., undermining free speech and civil rights. Jennie K. Lincoln, the Center’s senior advisor on Latin America and the Caribbean, is a former consultant with the Organization of American States, from which Venezuela withdrew in 2017 after repeated OAS attempts to undermine Venezuelan democracy and foment instability. Although we recognize that the Carter Center’s Democracy Program is praised for its election monitoring across the world, we are concerned that their funding sources, which include the US State Department, USAID, EU and UK government, make them vulnerable to imperialist political pressure. This may explain the hastiness of the Center in issuing its various statements and paralleling the US news cycle.
The Carter Center’s multiple press statements commit serious omissions and misrepresentations that undermine their credibility. We are most concerned by the Center’s claim that “voting took place in a generally civil manner” and that “Venezuelan citizens turned out peacefully.” Although our observations at voting stations early in the day certainly reflect that assessment, by the late afternoon, violent mobs targeted polling stations across the country to prevent the counting of the voting receipts and the distribution of the tallies. The Carter Center statement also failed to note the targeted attacks on election observers. NLG observers witnessed violent mobs with motorbikes and batons circling the hotel at which international observers were housed. At one point, our observers had to quickly run off the street to avoid what we fear may have become a violent encounter. Additionally, the Venezuelan electoral commission has reported a cyber attack that disrupted the transmission of results. The bot attack slowed down connections between the voting machines and the totalization center, and ultimately delayed the totalization process, an attack that should have raised red flags for the Carter Center. Recently, the Carter Center claimed the cyber attack was a hoax without offering any evidence, contrary to the conclusion reached by a technology professor from the Simon Bolivar University in Caracas. And perhaps worst of all, the Center has failed to mention the violence unleashed by the US-backed opposition, with right-wing mobs blocking key roads, including the one near Simón Bolívar International Airport, attacking buses, police vehicles, and security personnel, assassinating 2 grassroots activists from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, and setting fire to a hospital. This was hardly peaceful, either for voters, international observers, or the electoral commission. The Carter Center’s very serious omissions and misrepresentations in this regard undermine the credibility of both the Center’s previous statements on the July 28 election and the institution itself.
Furthermore, the Carter Center’s assertion that they could not “corroborate the results” of the election is a red flag because, until the statutory time to produce polling results has come to pass, nobody outside the CNE — and now the Venezuelan Supreme Court — has the results. We are struck by the statements’ lack of evidence to defend its claims. To our knowledge, there is no international law or domestic Venezuelan law requiring that election results be published on the morning after an election, let alone disaggregated by polling station. In fact, under Venezuelan law the election commission has 30 days to release the results. In the US, states often take weeks to officially certify final results. We are deeply concerned by the time pressure that the Carter Center is placing on Venezuela, which could have the unintended effect of destabilizing the nation and creating the conditions for further violence when tensions are already high.
The NLG delegation’s assessment of the Venezuelan electoral system stands in stark contrast to that of the Carter Center. As with past NLG delegations, our delegation was impressed by the safeguards in place to ensure electoral integrity and the veracity of the results, as well as the efficiency and participatory nature of the Venezuelan election system as compared to US electoral systems. None of the individuals our delegation met with (unescorted by members of the Venezuelan government), in places such as drug stores, supermarkets, the subway, restaurants, and elsewhere mentioned issues with registration or restricted freedom of expression.
For more information, please see the final NLG report on the 2024 presidential election: https://nlginternational.org/2024/07/national-lawyers-guild-report-election-monitoring-delegation-to-the-bolivarian-republic-of-venezuela/
