Waging Peace: Venezuela

Election Monitoring

1998 Election
In 1998, growing concern about the economy and government corruption fueled citizens' discontent with four decades of dominance of two political parties, spawning a populist movement led by Chávez. With prospective major political change and a climate of uncertainty surrounding the elections, the CNE invited significant international observation for the first time since 1959, when democracy took hold.

The Carter Center's 43-person team was led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former Bolivia President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, former Chile President Patricio Aylwin, and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady. The delegation noted the effectiveness of the country's new automated vote-count system, the first national electronic system in the world.

In its first year, the Chávez administration put forth a referendum on a new constitution, which, in December 1999, drew the support of 71 percent of voters. Every elected opposition position in the country was then presented to the voters again in 2000.

2000 Elections
Venezuelan authorities postponed the 2000 megaelection, originally scheduled for May 28, because of technical problems. In June and July 2000, the Center worked with civil society organizations, recommending an auditing process for the electronic vote count and assessing efforts to address these problems. A newly appointed CNE decided to hold two elections instead of one megaelection – one election on July 31 for the national, regional, and state posts and another at a later date for municipal offices.

President Carter; his wife, Rosalynn; former Costa Rica President Rodrigo Carazo; and former Uruguay President Luis Alberto Lacalle led a delegation to observe the July 31 election.

The election showed some improvement, but deficiencies continued as the new CNE neglected to educate voters and poll workers in a timely manner, failed to conduct appropriate national tests and simulations that could have exposed automated machinery glitches, and continued to delay the resolution of pending appeals after the elections.

The Carter Center concluded that while the election irregularities would not have changed the 2000 presidential outcome, in which Hugo Chávez won with 60 percent of the vote, the significant politicization of the elections and organizational deficiencies contributed to a lack of confidence in the process and the nonpresidential results, thus leading the Center to characterize the July 2000 elections as flawed.

International Tripartite Group
After Chávez's re-election in 2000, many in the country felt he was undermining democracy through his confrontational style and policies. The government and opposition groups had become so polarized, the political crisis threatened Venezuela's stability. President Chávez was removed from office for 48 hours in April 2002 until popular protests and a change in the military's position reinstated him.  At the invitation of the government and several opposition groups, The Carter Center joined the OAS and the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) in August 2002 to begin a formal process to help resolve Venezuela's political crisis.

The international tripartite working group began talks in early November 2002 between the government and opposition political and civil society groups to move the country beyond the current crisis.

After six months of intense negotiations, the OAS and the Center helped Venezuela's government and opposition agree in May 2003 on terms for a possible referendum on whether embattled President Chávez should step down.

Before moving on to the steps leading to a referendum, both sides were called upon to respect human rights, freedom of expression, and the right to petition for recall referenda of elected officials. Supporters of the government and the opposition who were members of the Forum on Negotiation and Agreements signed an accord agreeing to these rights on May 29, 2003, witnessed by the Center and the OAS.

Access the full text of the accord >

2004 Recall Vote
After the accord, the Center and the OAS were invited by the CNE to observe the entire recall effort. After a long and contentious period of verifying signatures requesting a recall, frustration grew. The delay in announcing the number of validated signatures and the preliminary disqualification of many of the signatures led to massive protests in Caracas that turned violent in February 2004. Sufficient signatures were eventually verified in June 2004, triggering a recall vote on Aug. 15, 2004, in which President Chávez won almost 60 percent of the vote. He completed the remainder of that presidential term and was re-elected to a new six-year term in December 2006.

Technical Mission
In 2006, The Carter Center organized a specialized, technical mission to observe the use of automated voting technology employed in the December 2007 presidential election. This mission had two main goals.  First, the mission wanted to demonstrate the support of the international community for democratic elections in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; and second, the mission wanted to contribute to a larger project of The Carter Center to develop and update methodologies for observing and evaluating voting systems globally.

Study Mission
Ahead of key Oct. 7, 2012, presidential elections in Venezuela, The Carter Center is conducting an independent study mission to follow the campaign, with political and electoral analysts interviewing political actors and technical experts on the ground.

The Center will follow the elections informally with long-term consultants and a small group during the election to report on Venezuelan perceptions of the process, results, and future. Following the election, the Center will publish a report for the international community about Venezuelan perceptions of the process and results.

In August 2012, The Carter Center declined an invitation from the Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE) to field a technical expert delegation to assess the automated voting system and accompany the elections because the invitation was received too late to organize the necessary experts and financing.

Addressing Media Polarization
Since 2000, the chasm has deepened between those who support and those who reject President Hugo Chávez and his political-ideological project; the polarization is nurtured by a lack of open dialogue.  Instead of facilitating such dialogue, media professionals, who have also partitioned along the lines of pro- or anti-Chavez, often exacerbate the existing divide.

The Carter Center initiated the Strengthening Professional Journalism in Venezuela project in December 2008 to address the need for a less politicized media in the midst of Venezuela's polarized society. To reduce the confrontational and partisan tone in much of the nation's reporting, the Center provides technical support to reporters from both pro-government and opposition media outlets. The project encourages ethical, balanced, and accurate reporting. It also promotes dialogue and improved relations between media professionals from public and private organizations through public seminars involving renowned international journalists and senior Venezuelan journalists and editors.

In 2012, The Carter Center is encouraging less partisan and more professional media reporting on Venezuela's electoral process through a series of workshops ahead of the country's Oct. 7 presidential election, offering one of the few spaces where journalists from diverse media participate together in the polarized society.

Venezuela's media outlets both reflect and contribute to the country's deep political and social divisions. Partisanship often outweighs commitment to professional journalistic standards in reporting and editing decisions. A group of leading journalists asked The Carter Center to conduct trainings because the media, in addition to political parties, are the primary source of information and analysis of the electoral process and whether parties are complying with electoral regulations.

Workshops and webinars have focused on topics such as the automated voting process, democratic election standards, and reading and interpreting public opinion polls.

Read more about this project.