Elections since 1998
1. December 1998: Hugo Chávez elected president with 56.2 per cent of the vote.
2. April 1999: National referendum on convening a constituent assembly to draw up a new constitution won with 71.8 per cent support.
3. July 1999: Election of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, Chávez supporters won a large majority of seats. 
4. December 1999: Referendum on whether to adopt the new constitution, won by Chávez supporters with 71.9 per cent of the vote.
5. July 2000: Presidential election held under the new constitution, won by Hugo Chávez with an increased majority of 59.76 per cent of the vote.
6. July 2000: Election of the National Assembly, Chávez supporters won a majority of the seats
7. December 2000: municipal elections with around two thirds supporting pro-Chávez parties.
8. August 2004: A national referendum called by the opposition on whether or not to remove Chávez from power, won by President Chávez with 59.3 per cent of the vote.
9. October 2005: Local and regional elections throughout the country, Chávez supporters won the elections in 80 per cent of the local authorities and 20 out of 22 provincial governments.
10. December 2005: National Assembly elections. Chávez’s party, the MVR, won a large majority of the seats following the cynical boycott of the election by some of the opposition.
These election processes have been verified as free and fair by international observers, including the Organisation of American States (OAS), the European Union and the US-based Carter Centre.
The confidence that Venezuelans have in their democratic system is shown in the results of a 2005 poll of 18 Latin American countries by respected Chilean firm Latinbarometro. Venezuelans were more likely than citizens of any other Latin American country to describe their government as ‘totally democratic’.
On a scale of 1 to 10, Venezuelan gave their democracy 7.6 compared with a regional average of 5.5. Venezuelans also had the second highest satisfaction level with the way their own democracy functions.
11. At Venezuela's presidential election on December 3, 2006, Hugo Chavez received a massive 63% of the vote with Manuel Rosales on 37%. Chávez won over seven million votes, three million more than Rosales.
The vote was scrutinized by over 300 observers from the European Union, the Organization of American States, Marcos and the Carter Center.
The election saw the greatest ever number of votes cast in Venezuela ’s history. Far from undermining democracy, as some have claimed, since Chávez was first elected participation in presidential elections has risen from seven million to around 12 million votes.
Not only did Chávez increase his share of the vote from 59% to 63%, he received over one million more votes than in the 2004 recall referendum. Since the 1998 election when Chávez was first elected, he has gained an additional 3.49 million votes - an increase of 95%.
Chávez also won a majority in every state in Venezuela at the presidential election.
The turnout of 74.97% was the highest since 1988. However, in 1988 only 7.2 million people voted - four million fewer than at this year’s election – in part reflecting how a large number of people were previously excluded from Venezuela's electoral process.
AN INDEPENDENT ELECTION
Elections are administered by the National Electoral Council (CNE), an independent institution of state, separate from the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches. It is comprised of 11 members of the National Assembly and 10 representatives of civil society, none of whom are appointed by the President.
MONITORING OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Venezuela’s elections are among the most observed anywhere in the world. The presidential election will be observed by the Organisation of American States and 130 EU observers and the Carter Centre. The Head of the EU delegation to Venezuela, Antonio García Velásquez, has said the agreement made with the Venezuelan electoral authorities ‘will allow us to work in complete liberty and with all requirements so that the job can be fulfilled in conformity with our stipulations.’ In addition, at each of the 33,000 polling stations throughout the country, the dozens of parties involved in the election will be entitled to an observer.
TRANSPARENCY
The presidential elections of Dec. 3, 2006 took place using an electronic touch-screen voting machine that provided every voter with a receipt. This allows the election authorities to conduct a manual recount of the paper receipts if the tally of a particular voting centre is challenged. The full electronic results can also be checked against a hand counted audit of 53 per cent of the machines. The election results were issued on a polling station-by-station basis to mitigate concerns that the transmission of electronic results could be subject to software manipulation – a concern raised by the opposition but extremely difficult to achieve in technical reality.
To eliminate any possibility of machine tampering, the National Electoral Council (CNE) has invested in technology that splits the security codes for the machines into four parts, which are then divided among a representative from the CNE, opposition parties, pro-government coalitions and international observers. In order for any change to the coding of the computers to be implemented, each of these parties must access the machines simultaneously. Numerous reports have endorsed the security of these machines.
In that the machines produce a receipt to allow the voter to check their vote, US Senator Bill Nelson (Florida) has argued they are more reliable than those used in countries such as the USA. In March 2006, the European Union Election Observation Mission wrote ‘the Venezuelan voting system possesses a number of features that are in line with the most advanced international standards of e-voting. In certain aspects, such as the paper trail audit, the system developed in Venezuela is probably the most advanced system in the world to date. On the security of the voting machines the report of the Chairperson of the EU Observation Mission to the 2005 elections stated that “The general conclusion of the observers was that the voting machines seemed very reliable.”
AUDITS OF THE ELECTORAL REGISTRY
Whilst it was previously estimated that hundreds of thousands of the poorest people were excluded from the national register of voters, the CNE has overseen numerous nationwide audits in recent years to ensure that the registry is accurate and up-to-date as possible. Most recently an audit was carried out by the Centre for Electoral Consultation and Promotion of the Inter-American Institute on Human Rights. International observers, including the Carter Centre and a delegation from the Dutch parliament, have monitored these audits and certified them as fair, and parties opposed to President Chávez have also taken part.
CONCERNS OVER US INTERFERENCE
Within Venezuela, concern has been expressed over US attempts to de-stabilise the democratically elected Chávez government and influence or delegitimise the electoral process.
The backdrop to these fears is the 2002 military coup, which ousted President Chávez temporarily and, in the few hours in which a new regime held office, moved to overturn much of Venezuela’s democratically supported constitution.
The Observer reported “the failed coup was closely tied to senior officials in the US government” with “long histories in the “dirty wars’’ of the 1980s, and links to death squads working in Central America at that time.” The Bush administration has made a number of hostile remarks in the past and taken measures which many fear could precede to future interventions.
These include:
-In April 2006, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for an “international united front” against Chávez and in July 2006, George Bush labelled Hugo Chávez a ‘threat undermining democracy”.
-In August 2006, a special CIA ‘mission’ was established to oversee US-intelligence activities on Venezuela. The CIA mission manager for Venezuela is Patrick Maher, whose biographical sketch indicates he was one of the architects of the CIA's current strategy in violence torn Colombia.
- In August 2006, following a freedom of information request, the Associated Press revealed that the Office of Transition Initiatives -- part of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) -- had spent more than US$26m on groups in Venezuela since 2002. The Bush administration has refused to name many of the groups it has funded. The US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy has also awarded US$2.9m to the Venezuelan NGO Sumate (12) and others.
- An official report on the US’ strategy for “transition” in Cuba, released in September 2006, suggests Venezuela is a threat to US national security.
- False claims that the Chávez government is not fully co-operating in efforts to curb the international drugs trade; this is even contradicted by separate US State Department reports. British minister Kim Howells responded to a parliamentary question in March 2006 that Venezuela had closely co-operated with Britain in counter-narcotics strategy.
- The US and NATO carried out military maneuvers - “Caribbean Lion” - near Venezuela earlier this year. The US has a military base in Curacao off Venezuela’s coast and a military presence in Colombia which borders Venezuela. This has added to concerns of future military intervention and attempted "regime change".