Venezuela’s opposition trounced Maduro, election receipts show

Venezuela’s opposition candidate trounced President Nicolás Maduro in last week’s election, according to election tallies that show the opposition’s Edmundo González received more than double the votes of Maduro.

A Washington Post review, published Sunday, analyzed more than 23,000 precinct-level tally sheets collected by the opposition. It found Maduro received about 30 percent of the vote (3,131,103 votes), compared to 67 percent for González (6,901,845 votes), further fueling doubts over Maduro’s declared victory in the race.

The tally sheets analyzed by the Post represented 79 percent of the voting tables from the July 28 election. The outlet noted that even if Maduro won every vote on the remaining 21 percent of tables, he would still fall behind González by more than 1.5 million votes.

An analysis by The Associated Press, published Saturday, found similar numbers after processing almost 24,000 images of tally sheets, also equal to about 79 percent of the nation’s voting machines.

The opposition party’s website, which tracked more than 80 percent of the country’s election results, showed a similar margin. According to the numbers, updated as of Thursday, Gonzalez received an estimated 7,156,462 votes, while Maduro received 3,241,461 votes.

“The result is clear: I obtained more than 67% of the votes,” González wrote Sunday in a post on the social platform X. “The regime has proclaimed false and unprovable results, they must be rejected and impartially verified. Only with the truth will Venezuela advance at this critical moment.”

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (NEC) declared Maduro the winner without initially publishing precinct-level results from the voting machines.

Amid mounting pressure, the NEC posted results Friday that it said were based on 96.87 percent of tally sheets. Those numbers showed Maduro with 6.4 million votes and Gonzalez with 5.3 million votes, the AP reported.

Major global groups are facing difficulties in overtly condemning the presidential election as fraudulent, as key member states play defense for Maduro.

The Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union were both headed toward a full-throated censure of Maduro until Venezuela’s allies stepped in.

In Europe, Hungary’s authoritarian-friendly government blocked an EU statement expressing concerns about “flaws and irregularities” in the election.

The OAS Permanent Council failed to pass a resolution condemning Maduro on Wednesday, though 17 members voted in favor, 11 abstained — including Brazil and Colombia — and five delegations, including Mexico, skipped the session.

Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, the three largest Latin American countries by population, led the push to give Maduro a pass.

The State Department on Thursday dismissed the significance of the OAS vote and released a strongly worded statement signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying official results were “deeply flawed.”

Blinken pointed to the opposition party’s tally sheets, which showed González as the true winner.

“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” Blinken said.

Thousands of protesters flocked to the streets last week after the NEC’s declaration of Maduro as the winner, and the governor said hundreds of protesters were arrested, per the AP.

Maduro and his campaign manager, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, tried to discredit the opposition party’s tally sheets, claiming they were missing signatures from the electoral council representative as well as poll workers and party representatives, the AP reported.

Rafael Bernal contributed.