What really happened in Venezuela?

摘要

Opponents of President Hugo Chavez have claimed that fraud thwarted their recent attempt to remove him from office in a recall referendum. Venezuela's election agency declared that Mr Chavez won the referendum by 59% to 41%. How can we assess these competing claims? The opposition's suspicions are based on three things. First, an exit poll supervised by Penn, Schoen, and Berland Associates (PSB), an American polling firm, and conducted by volunteers from Sumate, an opposition civic group, showed the opposition winning by 18 points. Second, there was a pattern of polling stations where several electronic voting machines returned an identical result, in what looked like a pre-programmed "cap" on the number of opposition votes. Third, in some places the "Yes" votes to recall the president were fewer than the number of signatures on a recall petition last year.