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

Transcript

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.