Venezuelans go to the polls with complete peace of mind
From Caracas, our special envoy Brian Mier updates us on how the electoral process is going in that country.teleSUR
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00:00Venezuelans continue to go to the polls in Sunday's presidential elections.
00:04Let's go live with our special envoy Brian Muir for the details of how it is developing.
00:09Hello, Brian. Welcome again to From the South. What can you tell us?
00:16Good afternoon, Luis Alberto.
00:18Well, we've just made it past the halfway point in today's presidential elections.
00:23And here at Pimentel School in Caracas, our team just saw a press conference
00:30by the vice president of the National Electoral Council, Carlos Quintero.
00:36And he said a couple of things that were interesting.
00:40Two points I think that really stood out were, one,
00:43they've already conducted 12 internal audits of the electronic voting system this morning.
00:49And two, they've guaranteed that 100% of the voting stations are currently open,
00:56the voting centers, and people are out voting.
00:59This is the third center I've been to this morning, or now early afternoon.
01:05And of the three, I noticed there was a very large crowd out here in front of the school.
01:10It's a little bit smaller than the other two places I went to.
01:13That explains part of it.
01:14But a nice touch, which you can see by looking inwards under the mezzanine here,
01:22is that they've set up seats so that people don't have to stand while they're waiting to vote.
01:27I think that's a nice touch that should be done in other countries like the United States
01:32and other places that have elections when they build up long lines and stuff like that.
01:38Anyway, other than the fact that the lines are getting a little bit bigger right now,
01:45there's no reports of any violence or any serious problems with the voting centers for now.
01:52Everything seems to be going smoothly.
01:54We talked to an election observer from Argentina
01:58who told us that he believes that Venezuela has one of the best election systems in the world,
02:04and I can compare it positively against Brazil, where I live.
02:08Brazil also has an electronic voting system.
02:11And a lead-up to the 2022 elections in Brazil,
02:17President Bolsonaro did an internal study with the army
02:21to see if they could figure out any way to hack into the system
02:25because he was trying to cry fraud before the election even began,
02:29which is another case we see in other countries among far-right candidates.
02:34And it was an internal survey, but it leaked,
02:37and it showed that Brazil's own army was unable to hack into its electronic voting system.
02:42And the system here seems like it has more safeguards and more protections against fraud.
02:47So with only five and a half hours left,
02:50it's not going to be long now until the millions of Venezuelans who've come out today
02:54to choose their next president find out who this person is going to be.
03:01Thank you, Brian, for the latest information.
03:03We'll be in touch with you again in the upcoming news minute for more details.