Comics

Like I said, Lula, despite downplaying the relevance of the discrepancies, has encouraged the sharing of the full count. Along with Mexico and Colombia they've been pushing for the full count to be released while criticising the US for jumping to recognize the opposition as winners. Spain's government, a coalition of social democrats, communists and populist leftists, has done pretty much the same thing. That seems to be the trend on left-leaning international governments at the moment.

The most popular quantitative argument, beyond the huge discrepancy with the exit polls, is that the first results offered with 80% count show oddly round numbers with a single decimal each that match dividing the count of the two larger parties to the reported results and then rounding up the vote count to the closest integer. The back of the napkin math gives you a low p-value, with a 1 in 100 million chance of the numbers showing up as round as they are. This by itself doesn't mean the result is false, but paired with the fact that the full count hasn't been released, that the results used to call it were only at 80% of the full count --unusually low for how close the whole thing is, although they have produced more complete results by now-- and that Maduro wins with a narrow majority, rather than a plurality that would add legitimacy questions I do think it's reasonable to ask for the full tally. This is Spanish nonpartisan (but left-leaning) organization maldita.es saying about as much, since US-based orgs seem to be fudnamentally disqualified around these parts. The opposition has also produced an alternate set of tallies, although nobody has verified those, to my knowledge.

So yeah, the original 80% count results look weird to a reasonable observer, quantitatively and qualitatively. As time goes on, the lack of a recount or a full set of official count documents makes the possibility of reviewing the tally or recounting less productive, as it's more likely for positions to entrench and for whatever is produced to not be given credence. Venezuela really doesn't need any help for this to be a shitshow now, regardless of what happens or what the real count is.

Again, I'm not from Venezuela and I don't have a horse in this race, but as a left-leaning person in a place where the right frequently uses Maduro's crap as a cudgel, I am not willing to endorse that guy on principle.

Oh, and I don't see much in the way of quantitative analysis on that NLG report. If anything I'm surprised by how partisan it reads, although I'm not familiar with their record for independence. In any case, I'm with Lula, AMLO, Sánchez and the rest on this, they should have released the count documentation from their supposedly fully automated system immediately.

Anyway, I'm stepping off. This place is full of propaganda on an issue that I take no pleasure in discussing. This sucks on a fundamental level, and I have no intention of playing devil's advocate on this issue, just like I don't have any intention of acting as a Maduro surrogate. I'm not here to circlejerk or to make myself more bummed out by this than I already am.