By Luis Manuel Aguana
Less than a month ago, on October 26, 2026, an unidentified senior official from the U.S. State Department made statements via teleconference that were so important for Venezuela that the State Department spokesperson's office published them in full on its website under the title "Senior State Department Official on Venezuela" (see Press Release, Department of State, Senior State Department Official on Venezuela, October 26, 2026, in https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesman/2026/10/senior-state-department-official-on-venezuela/).
I was particularly struck by his remarks regarding what would unfold in Venezuela in connection with the elections—specifically, the curious lack of reaction from the Venezuelan opposition, especially from those factions that clamor every single day for “elections now.”
I will discuss what this high-ranking official within our electoral system said, as much of his argument has been echoed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in relation to the elections in Venezuela. Let’s take a look:
“The elections in the country are run by the CNE, which is basically the Consejo Nacional Electoral, the National Electoral Council. In Venezuela, that council isn’t just your elections department. So, I live in [a U.S.] county and they run the elections. They put out the machines, they tabulate the votes. This council theoretically does that, but it does much more than that. It also decides which parties get to register and who gets to run. And that’s how they disqualified María Corina, for example, and a bunch of other people, and Edmundo ended up being sort of like the default candidate because they forgot to remove him.
So, with that groundwork in place, let me go back in history a little bit as to why these efforts have failed in the past. If you recall that under the Biden administration, they negotiated extensively with the Maduro regime on new elections in 2024, and they reached an agreement on new elections in 2024. And as product of that agreement, the Biden administration gave the Maduro regime all kinds of concessions, including sanctions relief, but they also released the narcotrafficking convicted nephews of Cilia Maduro – Cilia, Maduro’s wife. They released Alex Saab as part of that deal, all irreversible concessions that they made.
Venezuela and the Maduro regime then proceeded to have an election in 2024, but they had an election with the old TSJ, with the old CNE; in essence, with the existing infrastructure. You cannot have a free and fair election that is accepted by both sides and all sides in a country as long as that infrastructure is in place. So that infrastructure needs to be replaced. That infrastructure needs to be ripped out and replaced with something new. You can’t have credible elections in that country without that in place.”.
The high-ranking official’s reasoning stems from the fact that the National Electoral Council (CNE)—which, in Venezuela, constitutes a formal branch of the State—possesses powers that have thwarted efforts by both current and past U.S. administrations to successfully negotiate for fair, free, and verifiable elections. Indeed, the existing “infrastructure” of this electoral body has been used to block political parties and candidates, making it essential, in the official’s view, to dismantle it and replace it with something entirely new.
In fairness, while it is true that the CNE has blocked the registration of political parties to suit the regime’s interests—and manipulated others—it has not, in itself, been the entity that prevented specific individuals from running as candidates. That role has been played by other Venezuelan state institutions, all firmly aligned with the ruling regime—such as the Office of the Comptroller General (CGR) and the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ)—with the CNE merely serving as the body that carried out those decisions.
When I first read the original English text, I interpreted the term “infrastructure” as the technical system the CNE uses to count votes. However, this high-ranking official’s interpretation goes further. What the State Department refers to as “infrastructure” actually encompasses the full scope of the Venezuelan electoral authority’s powers—a framework structurally enshrined in our Constitution. They envision reducing the CNE to a purely “technical” body, stripped of any political decision-making authority. The State Department overlooks the fact that such a change would first require amending the Constitution…
One might agree with the idea of “neutering” the CNE—limiting its function solely to the counting of votes, as is the case in the United States, just as the official suggests. Yet, that is a decision that belongs exclusively to the Venezuelan people—not to mention the broader debate over whether the CNE should even remain a distinct branch of the State. But let us continue with the high-ranking official’s statement:
“The second thing that has to happen here, and it’s happening concurrently – in fact, we’re already beginning that conversation for the next round of talks – is we have to first reform the CNE, the electoral council, and then we have to replace its membership. And we’re going to follow a very similar process here except that process will not require National Assembly ratification. We’ll set up a similar committee of experts to nominate the names and members of the CNE, so that we’ll have new members of the CNE, but we are also going to change, by mutual agreement both sides, they’re going to change what the CNE is.
The CNE will now become basically a technical platform. It will remove all of the – all the political aspects of the CNE, meaning they’re no longer going to be in a position to remove candidates from the ballot or decide who gets to run or who doesn’t get to run. Their sole job will be equivalent to what our elections departments do in the United States in our respective counties in the 50 states and territories, and that is they’re the people that put out the machines, count the votes, open the polling places, count the votes and report the results. And it will be a nonpolitical CNE.”.
And here, things take a strange turn—or, as we say around here, "the cat jumps onto the tray." Could it be that the U.S. is cooking up a constitutional change in Venezuela without us even realizing it? On what grounds does the negotiation currently underway between the two "Assemblies"—the one from 2025 and the one from 2015—justify bypassing the procedures established in the Constitution for appointing the rectors of the National Electoral Council (CNE), effectively doing so without the ratification of the National Assembly? Article 296 of the Constitution states: “…The members of the National Electoral Council shall be appointed by the National Assembly with the vote of two-thirds of its members. The members of the National Electoral Council shall elect their own President from among themselves, in accordance with the law….”.
There is a fundamental error in that statement by the high-ranking official. Before proceeding to "reform the CNE" and "replace its members"—by "creating a committee of experts to nominate candidates"—they would first have to amend the 1999 Constitution. Furthermore, if the proposal entails a structural reform—the kind the U.S. official describes right to our faces in this press release, suggesting that the CNE should cease to be an independent branch of government and instead become a technical body that merely counts votes (much like in the U.S.)—such a structural change could not be achieved through a constitutional amendment or reform (as per Articles 340 and 342 of the Constitution); it would require a National Constituent Assembly.
Do not misunderstand me. I do believe that the scope of the current electoral branch in Venezuela should be re-examined. In fact, the way elections are conducted in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world should also be reviewed, with the goal of creating a fair electoral system for Venezuela—one that is entirely independent of the influence of political actors. However, for the U.S. State Department to openly tell us that they will change the system by overriding our Constitution—regardless of the pressure they may exert on the criminals currently in power in Venezuela—should prompt an outcry not just from this writer, but from the entire country. Yet, I see no such reaction anywhere, especially not from the nation’s primary opposition political party.
The requirement for an apolitical National Electoral Council (CNE) is already enshrined in our Constitution, even if, regrettably, it has never been upheld since 1999. But that does not justify violating the Constitution once again to achieve it. If the goal of these negotiations is to establish a legitimate Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ), it would be a disastrous start to overlook such an unconstitutional outrage regarding the electoral authority; doing so would render everything that follows illegitimate from the very outset. There are a million ways to climb out of a hole, but only one way to die in it…
Caracas, November 14, 2026
Blog: TIC’s & Derechos Humanos, https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email:
luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
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