By Luis Manuel Aguana
Dedicated to all past and present defenders of the human right to authentic elections in Venezuela
What do elections in Venezuela since 2004 have in common with the presidential elections held in Mesa County, Colorado—USA—in 2020, the election that handed victory to Joe Biden? Mesa County, Colorado, has a population of just over 160,000 inhabitants—roughly one-third the population of the Sucre Municipality in the state of Miranda, Venezuela.
You might be wondering the relevance of such a question, and why it should matter to us Venezuelans. Well, the answer could serve as the initial thread that unravels the electoral systems of both the United States and Venezuela—and, in the process, brings down those directly responsible for the electoral fraud perpetrated in our country since 2004, as well as those responsible for the alleged fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
The answer to the opening question lies in the automated electoral system used to determine the winner of that election in the United States. Venezuela and Mesa County, Colorado, share the same automated electoral system—albeit implemented by different companies—a system that has been in use in Venezuela since 2004. That year—the year of the recall referendum against Hugo Chávez Frías—the CNE (National Electoral Council) decided to replace our previous manual vote-counting system, thereby placing the ultimate responsibility for election results in the hands of voting machines.
From that moment on, in Venezuela, automated results have taken precedence over any manual tallying performed by poll watchers: Organic Law on Electoral Processes, “Article 141: The act of vote counting shall be automated, and—exceptionally—manual, whenever the National Electoral Council so determines.” Article 437 of the Regulations to the Organic Law on Electoral Processes states: “…Under no circumstances shall the Citizen Verification process be considered a vote count, nor does it form part of that act.”
For many years, a group of citizens—myself included—have denounced the CNE’s automated system based on the inconsistency of its results. Many have fallen by the wayside in the course of this struggle. The results released by the CNE since 2004 (with the exception of the 2024 presidential election results, as none were issued) have never borne any relation to the actual reality on the ground in the country.
Until today, there had been no definitive proof that electoral results were being manipulated—at least not prior to July 28, 2024. Even then—despite the fact that, with official tally sheets in hand, it could be demonstrated that the results did not match those proclaimed by the CNE—it was never possible, from the very inception of the automated electoral system’s operation in Venezuela, to determine precisely how the results were being technically rigged to present election outcomes that, by all appearances, bore no resemblance to reality or to the general perception of the political situation held by the Venezuelan people.
I have lost count of the articles I have published regarding electoral matters and technical fraud over my more than 15 years of presence on social media. You could scour this blog from start to finish, but I will spare you the reading—offering instead just a brief reference to four posts published in pivotal years—2012, 2019, 2022, and 2024—as a testament to this grave reality: La Naturaleza delató al CNE (in Spanish), in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2012/12/la-naturaleza-delato-al-cne.html; Alfredo Weil, technician and humanist, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/alfredo-weil-technician-and-humanist.html; Unitary Platform, the new fraud enablers, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/unitary-platform-new-fraud-enablers.html; and 20 years of electoral ignominy, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/20-years-of-electoral-ignominy.html.
The significance of the events that unfolded in Mesa County, Colorado, in 2020 comes to light—primarily through the case involving the sentence handed down against Ms. Tina Peters, the county’s election clerk—which I will briefly recount for you below:
“Peters, a former election clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, is serving a nine-year prison sentence following her August 2024 conviction on seven charges, including four felonies, related to a 2021 security breach of the county's voting systems as she sought evidence to support Trump's claims that his loss to former President Joe Biden was due to voter fraud” (see Fox News, Trump continues to push for release of Tina Peters as Colorado governor weighs clemency, in https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-tina-peters-colorado-clemency-push).
President Trump took a personal interest in the case of Tina Peters, writing the following a few days ago on his social network, Truth Social:: “Free Tina Peters, a 73-year-old woman with cancer, given a nine-year death sentence in a Colorado prison by a Democrat governor, Jared Polis, and a corrupt political machine, for exposing fraud by the Democrats during the 2020 presidential election Again, free Tina! " (See previous Fox News article.).
As a result of all this, details regarding that process in the U.S. began to emerge—particularly the strictly technical aspects. It is to these specific details that I wish to draw attention in this article. Peters, leveraging her position as the election official in charge of the process in Mesa County, created unauthorized copies of the data contained within the voting machines—aided by an unauthorized technical expert—immediately following the election and before the company’s own technicians could access the devices. This action resulted in a lawsuit filed against her by the company responsible for the county’s election process: Dominion Voting Systems.
Tina Peters’ trial was, in essence, a political one. In 2024, Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison, whereas others charged with similar offenses received sentences consisting “only probation and community service.” The Governor of Colorado is now locked in a standoff with Trump regarding either Peters’ release or her transfer to a federal prison—a dispute that has escalated to the point where the U.S. President is freezing federal aid funds and programs allocated to the state, employing this as a pressure tactic to secure Tina Peters’ release.
But this story doesn't end there. Tina Peters' lawyer, John Case, presented testimonies that were not heard at the trial due to the political bias of the case, especially one very important one: a Venezuelan witness, an electoral systems technician, who gave very detailed testimony regarding the system used in Mesa County, owned by the company Dominion Voting Systems, the same system that, according to his statement, was used in Venezuela by the company Smartmatic. And most interestingly, the full statement of this witness was published in September of last year, 2025, after Peters' imprisonment (see the full statement in English, in Sworn Testimony of the Venezuelan Smartmatic Whistleblower, in https://rumble.com/v6zg9u8-sworn-testimony-of-the-venezuelan-smartmatic-whistleblower.html).
And why does this now take on such paramount importance? Because President Donald Trump is staking the political future of his administration on the upcoming midterm elections in November; consequently, it is of critical importance to expose the potential technical fraud involving the company allegedly used to alter U.S. election results in 2020—Dominion Voting Systems—specifically in Mesa County, as well as in the 3,000 other counties across the U.S. where that system is in use.
However, this directly implicates the intellectual and technical architects of the electoral fraud in Venezuela because—according to the witness's testimony—the system utilized by Dominion Voting Systems in Mesa County, Colorado, was the very same one developed for Venezuela’s National Electoral Council in 2003 for the recall referendum against Hugo Chávez Frías. Although the video of the Venezuelan technician's testimony is in English, I invite you to read the complete transcript in Spanish (see Texto Completo Declaración del Testigo Caso Tina Peters, in https://tinyurl.com/2k38ed86). From there, I will later extract certain passages that I consider of utmost importance for the future of the automated electoral system, posing the pertinent questions.
In light of this testimony, we can state—without a shadow of a doubt—what lawyers often say: "A party's confession obviates the need for further proof." The same principle applies here: a confession of fraud no need for proof. To my knowledge, this marks the first time that a technical expert—one of the actual perpetrators behind the fraud involving Smartmatic and the CNE—has come forward to provide a formal statement explaining, in minute detail, precisely how the manipulation of votes was technically executed within Venezuela’s automated electoral system. Furthermore, he identifies both the direct perpetrators and the intellectual masterminds responsible for this electoral crime. It is not my place to formally designate them as such; that responsibility rests with Venezuela’s legitimate authorities—whenever such authorities are finally established—and with the subsequent investigations that must be launched once the rule of law is restored to the country.
Consequently, I will limit myself to highlighting only the key technical aspects of this statement as they pertain to the electoral fraud we have been denouncing for years. Given that the U.S. government is fully apprised of these statements—as the witness himself explicitly noted—it now falls to the United States, in its capacity as Venezuela’s guardian nation, to take action against the perpetrators of this technical fraud in both countries. It must take whatever measures it deems appropriate to ensure that the popular will is no longer defrauded under the pretext of employing technological advancements to select public officials.
Who is the witness?
“I have 20 years of experience in electoral systems. My experience comes from Venezuela from 2003 onward, where we received for the first time and we configured the Smartmatic systems for the first time in Venezuela. We configured the transmission systems and the tally systems. I was the national coordinator for voting machines. I was the national coordinator for national data and I worked in the creation of situation rooms or war rooms for the Venezuelan Government…. I was responsible for configuring the voting equipment. I was responsible for configuring the electoral manager system. Responsible for the transmission systems. Responsible for the electoral system audits along with the Carter Center and the European Union. On top of that I was after that responsible for the data centers where we keep all the information of the voter records, biometric systems and the electoral systems for an election day.”.
How is the fraud regarding the Hugo Chávez Frías Recall Referendum carried out?
“In the case of 2004, 1 million fake voters were inputted into the system into the record of voters. …. And the electoral system was used to determine who each citizen had voted for. That the government later on used to be able to persecute those that were not within its ranks. In 2006, a tool was used. The tool was called SAES, SAES Data Utility… SAES Data Utility is a tool that allows you to do a general test of the entire electoral system. In order for you to test the entire system, you need to input the different credentials and also the certifications for the particular election. And this tool allows you to emulate voting machines in order to then transmit the votes.”…. “This tool allows you to emulate a voting machine. It allows you to emulate multiple voting machines. The original machine is not transmitting, but I'm animating this machine, and I'm transmitting whatever data I need to be transmitted. In the case of Venezuela, the machines that would be transmitted or the data of the machines that would be transmitted were the machines that were not going to be audited.” (emphasis added).
In what way was the SAES Data Utility tool used to alter the votes of Venezuelans?
“By using a statistical system, knowing the elector's behavior without exceeding a maximum of two or three percent of vote manipulation, while at the same time taking over a large number of voting machines that you need in order to change the total amount of votes that you need to modify. …. This is supposed to be a tool that for its normal usage is supposed to allow you to test the integrity of the system. For when it's misused, it can allow you to inject votes without people knowing you did so.” (emphasis added).
How did the Smartmatic-CNE system end up at Dominion Voting Systems in the U.S.?
“Smartmatic purchases Sequoia in 2005. The size of the software is implemented for the elements of Sequoia. From 2007 to 2013, Sequoia and Dominion were for the elections in the Philippines. And that relationship allows Dominion to purchase Sequoia in 2010. Therefore, the SAES election software from Smartmatic ended up being implemented in Sequoia and later on transferred to Dominion”.
What did the witness discover upon examining the data that Tina Peters copied?
“That the electoral systems of Dominion have vulnerabilities that can be used to attack the system. Its source code is not 100% obfuscated or hidden. The use and handling of passwords is all stored in plain text, which allows you to get that data from the database. You can get it from the backups of the different elections, from the setting files of an election, and from the button device that allows you to have access to the equipment because the credentials are also stored in the button itself. Once you have that information, and if you know how the system operates, then you can attack the encryption libraries, which then literally allows you to manipulate the system and change those at will”.
Is this technical information known to the U.S. government?
“Yes. Part of this information, part of what I have told you today. The year would be 2024.… it was March or April”.
Although relations between Smartmatic and the CNE broke down in 2017, the latter continued to use Smartmatic's software, which is why the company filed a lawsuit with the ICSID, alleging that “…all the equipment and programs it used in the elections were taken away and began to be used by the Argentine company Ex-Clé, which used them in several electoral processes held subsequently” (see in Spanish, Transparency Venezuela, The 3 revelations of Smartmatic's lawsuit against the Venezuelan State at the ICSID, in https://transparenciave.org/las-3-revelaciones-de-la-demanda-de-smartmatic-contra-el-estado-venezolano-en-el-ciadi/). That allowed the CNE to continue using the same technical fraud mechanism from Smartmatic to this day.
I have extracted a small portion of a statement that corroborates all the suspicions that we technical experts have harbored regarding the alteration of election results in Venezuela since 2004. The use of specialized software to inject votes—virtually simulating the behavior of the actual voting machines—specifically to alter the results from unaudited machines, was a cornerstone argument that this writer has maintained since the very inception of this crusade. The unaudited machines were always the key to the technical fraud in Venezuela.
The modification of electoral laws to shift vote tabulation from manual to automated—coupled with the creation of a "lottery" system designed to exempt 46% of the results from auditing across all polling stations nationwide—proved to be the ideal legal smokescreen for perpetrating a crime. An unaudited and manipulated 46% is more than sufficient to alter any election outcome.
All of this reaffirms the non-negotiable necessity of opening the ballot boxes and counting *every single* ballot—even if the current automated vote-counting system remains in place for future elections. I hope the opposition finally grasps the imperative need to revert Venezuela’s electoral system to a manual process and to conduct a thorough audit of the CNE’s Electoral Registry—an audit that must be preceded by a comprehensive cleanup of the SAIME’s National Registry of Venezuelan ID Holders. That, in my judgment, will be the first step toward beginning to cleanse Venezuela of nearly 30 years of political obscurantism.
Caracas, March 22, 2026
Blog: TIC’s & Derechos Humanos, https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email:
luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario