| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"pedro martori" |
| Date: |
12 Sep 2004 08:45:12 AM |
| Object: |
New evidence that Jimmy Carter got fooled in Venezuela |
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Conned in Caracas
New evidence that Jimmy Carter got fooled in Venezuela.
Thursday, September 9, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT=20
Both the Bush Administration and former President Jimmy Carter =
were quick to bless the results of last month's Venezuelan recall vote, =
but it now looks like they were had. A statistical analysis by a pair of =
economists suggests that the **beep**-sample "audit" results that the =
Americans trusted weren't **beep** at all.
This is no small matter. The imprimatur of Mr. Carter and his =
Carter Center election observers is being used by Venezuelan President =
Hugo Chavez to claim a mandate. The anti-American strongman has been =
steering his country toward dictatorship and is stirring up trouble =
throughout Latin America. If the recall election wasn't fair, why would =
Americans want to endorse it?
The new study was released this week by economists Ricardo =
Hausmann of Harvard and Roberto Rigobon of MIT. They zeroed in on a key =
problem with the August 18 vote audit that was run by the government's =
electoral council (CNE): In choosing which polling stations would be =
audited, the CNE refused to use the **beep** number generator =
recommended by the Carter Center. Instead, the CNE insisted on its own =
program, run on its own computer. Mr. Carter's team acquiesced, and =
Messrs. Hausmann and Rigobon conclude that, in controlling this =
software, the government had the means to cheat.
"This result opens the possibility that the fraud was committed =
only in a subset of the 4,580 automated centers, say 3,000, and that the =
audit was successful because it directed the search to the 1,580 =
unaltered centers. That is why it was so important not to use the Carter =
Center number generator. If this was the case, Carter could never have =
figured it out."
Mr. Hausmann told us that he and Mr. Rigoban also "found very =
clear trails of fraud in the statistical record" and a probability of =
less than 1% that the anomalies observed could be pure chance. To put it =
another way, they think the chance is 99% that there was electoral =
fraud.
The authors also suggest that the fraud was centralized. Voting =
machines were supposed to print tallies before communicating by Internet =
with the CNE center. But the CNE changed that rule, arranging to have =
totals sent to the center first and only later printing tally sheets. =
This increases the potential for fraud because the Smartmatic voting =
machines suddenly had two-way communication capacity that they weren't =
supposed to have. The economists say this means the CNE center could =
have sent messages back to polling stations to alter the totals.=20
None of this would matter if the auditing process had been open to =
scrutiny by the Carter observers. But as the economists point out: =
"After an arduous negotiation, the Electoral Council allowed the OAS =
[Organization of American States] and the Carter Center to observe all =
aspects of the election process except for the central computer hub, a =
place where they also prohibited the presence of any witnesses from the =
opposition. At the time, this appeared to be an insignificant detail. =
Now it looks much more meaningful."
Yes, it does. It would seem that Colin Powell and the Carter =
Center have some explaining to do. The last thing either would want is =
for Latins to think that the U.S. is now apologizing for governments =
that steal elections. Back when he was President, Mr. Carter once =
famously noted that the Afghanistan invasion had finally caused him to =
see the truth about Leonid Brezhnev. A similar revelation would seem to =
be in order toward Mr. Chavez. ?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX =3D SECTION >
The Wall Street Journal
=20
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