Months of negotiations about how elections would be held. Weeks of tense campaigning. A day of enormous turnout. And in the end, Venezuela’s election authority, which is controlled by the current government, pulled out some unsubstantiated numbers claiming that Nicolás Maduro was re-elected. As though that were the end of this story.

It’s obviously not, and 36 hours had not yet passed between the polls’ closing and the recording of this podcast. But Laura Dib, who runs WOLA’s Venezuela program, and I wanted to get this out quickly. It’s a clear explainer of where things stand and what needs to happen now.

Here’s the text from WOLA’s podcast landing page:

Laura Cristina Dib, WOLA’s director for Venezuela, discusses the aftermath of the Venezuelan elections that took place on July 28, 2024, as new developments continue to come to light. WOLA continues to monitor the situation.

Laura describes what we know up to this point:

• Six hours after the polls closed, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) declared authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro the winner by a 51 to 44 percent margin, but did not provide any breakdown of the vote, neither by state nor by voting station as the law requires.
• The official process of transmitting the votes to the CNE by official poll supervisors was not completed before announcing Maduro’s victory. Nor was the process of CNE verification.
• The official tally sheets with voting stations’ counts—the product of an automated, digital process—were not released, making impossible the lawful process of public scrutiny.
• The opposition announced they secured 73 percent of the voting stations’ counts, indicating 2.7 million votes for Maduro and 6.2 million votes for opposition candidate Edmundo González.
• As of the morning of July 30, there have been 187 protests in 20 states in the previous 12 hours, and 20 verified cases of new arbitrary detentions, one disappearance, 5 homicides, and 1 case of harassment.
• On July 30, the Carter Center’s election observers delayed publication of their preliminary report, likely to allow its personnel to exit the country first.
• Independent polling showed a widespread desire to migrate away from Venezuela if the election fails to unseat Maduro.

While civil society organizations including WOLA have, for months, warned about the lack of transparency in Venezuela’s election process, adding that they would not be free and fair, Laura urges the international community to resist “Venezuela fatigue” and “keep their eye on Venezuela.” She calls on governments and international civil society to keep demanding transparency in the election results, as a number of countries have already done, including the United States, Brazil, and Colombia, and to encourage an independent observer to verify the results.

In the lead up to the election, WOLA published commentaries Political Scenarios in Venezuela: Transition on the Horizon?, Four Takeaways on Electoral Conditions Ahead of Venezuela’s 2024 Presidential Election, and a Youtube video series discussing the electoral process.

Download this podcast episode’s .mp3 file here. Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here.