2024 Venezuelan presidential election

Based on Wikipedia: 2024 Venezuelan presidential election

On a Sunday in late July 2024, millions of Venezuelans lined up at polling stations across their country to cast votes in what would become one of the most brazenly stolen elections in modern Latin American history. By the time the dust settled, the opposition candidate had fled to Spain with an arrest warrant on his head, thousands of protesters had been detained in a crackdown the government cheerfully nicknamed "Operation Tun Tun," and the sitting president—a former bus driver turned authoritarian strongman—was preparing for his third consecutive term in office.

The story of how Venezuela arrived at this moment is a decade-long saga of democratic collapse, economic catastrophe, and the slow strangulation of a once-vibrant political opposition.

The Candidates

The July 28th election pitted two starkly different figures against each other.

Nicolás Maduro, the incumbent, had been running Venezuela since 2013, when he inherited the presidency from his mentor Hugo Chávez. Maduro had transformed himself from the head of the bus drivers' union into Chávez's chosen successor, and then into something Chávez himself never quite became: a dictator willing to openly rig elections and jail opponents to stay in power.

His challenger was Edmundo González, a seventy-four-year-old retired diplomat who had spent decades in Venezuela's foreign service before becoming, almost by accident, the face of the opposition. González wasn't supposed to be the candidate. He was a substitute—and the woman he was substituting for would cast a long shadow over the entire election.

The Woman Who Wasn't on the Ballot

María Corina Machado won the opposition primary in October 2023 in a landslide. She was everything Maduro feared: charismatic, uncompromising, and wildly popular. So the government did what authoritarian governments do. They banned her from running.

The mechanism was almost comically transparent. Venezuela's Comptroller General announced that Machado was "disqualified from holding public office for fifteen years" based on her alleged links to Juan Guaidó—the opposition leader whom the United States and dozens of other countries had recognized as Venezuela's legitimate president during the 2019 constitutional crisis—and her supposed support for international sanctions against Venezuela.

Legal scholars pointed out that the accusations made no sense. Machado hadn't even served in the National Assembly with Guaidó. She wasn't part of his government. The disqualification was, as constitutional lawyers put it, "illegal and unconstitutional." But in a country where the Supreme Court is stacked with Maduro loyalists, constitutional niceties had become quaint relics of a bygone era.

The opposition scrambled. In a last-ditch maneuver, they nominated González as their candidate, a dignified elder statesman who could serve as Machado's proxy on the ballot.

The Campaign Trail as Obstacle Course

Running for office against Maduro wasn't just politically difficult. It was physically dangerous.

During the primary campaign, Machado and her supporters were attacked by colectivos—pro-government paramilitary groups that operate with impunity in Venezuela. At a February 2024 rally in Charallave, colectivos assaulted Machado's campaign team while security officials stood by and watched. In July 2023, militants tried to prevent her rallies in the coastal state of Vargas and in Petare, one of Caracas's largest slums.

The threats escalated beyond physical intimidation. Machado's campaign headquarters in Táchira state were vandalized with messages reading "death to María Corina," signed by the National Liberation Army, a Colombian guerrilla group. Death threats flooded social media. Delsa Solórzano, another opposition figure, reported receiving messages warning that "the collective forces of the ELN are going to kill you."

Other opposition candidates faced their own ordeals. Henrique Capriles, a former presidential candidate, was physically assaulted in June. His supporters were attacked at rallies. Freddy Superlano, representing the Popular Will party, had his passport confiscated at the Colombian border.

On the morning of the October 2023 primary itself, the intimidation reached a fever pitch. In Caracas, colectivos blocked the installation of voting centers. Armed civilians entered a polling station and fired shots at the coordinator. Motorcyclists threw tear gas canisters near voting locations. Nuns reported that voters were being threatened. Despite all this, Venezuelans showed up anyway—and gave Machado her commanding victory.

A Brief Glimmer of Hope

In October 2023, something unexpected happened. The Maduro government sat down with opposition representatives in Barbados and signed an agreement. Both sides pledged to hold free and fair elections and accept the results. In exchange, the United States would ease sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry.

For a moment, it seemed like a breakthrough. International observers dared to hope that Venezuela might be finding its way back toward democratic governance.

That hope lasted about three months.

In January 2024, Venezuela's Supreme Court—the same court packed with Maduro allies back in 2016—confirmed Machado's disqualification. The Barbados Agreement, it turned out, was worth less than the paper it was written on. By April, the United States had reinstated sanctions, concluding that Maduro's government had "fallen short" on its commitments.

Election Day and Its Aftermath

July 28, 2024 arrived with the world watching. Venezuelan voters turned out in massive numbers, many waiting for hours in the tropical heat. Opposition poll watchers stationed themselves at voting centers across the country, prepared to document the results.

What happened next has been described by political scientist Steven Levitsky as "one of the most egregious electoral frauds in modern Latin American history."

At the end of election day, Venezuela's National Electoral Council—the body responsible for tabulating votes—announced that Nicolás Maduro had won with about 51 percent of the vote. It was a narrow victory, the CNE claimed, but a victory nonetheless.

There was just one problem: they provided no evidence whatsoever.

In any normal election, the electoral authority releases detailed vote tallies. Precinct-by-precinct breakdowns. The raw numbers that prove their announced result matches reality. The Venezuelan CNE did none of this. They simply declared Maduro the winner and expected everyone to take their word for it.

The opposition, however, had prepared for exactly this scenario.

The Receipts

Venezuelan voting machines produce paper receipts called actas—official tally sheets that document the vote count at each polling station. By law, copies of these receipts are given to witnesses from each party. The opposition had spent months organizing a nationwide network of poll watchers to collect these documents.

When the government announced Maduro's victory, the opposition did something extraordinary. They published the actas online, creating a searchable database that anyone could access. The documents covered a majority of Venezuela's polling centers.

The story they told was devastating for Maduro.

According to the opposition's tally sheets—official government documents, signed by electoral officials—Edmundo González hadn't just won. He had won by a landslide, capturing roughly 67 percent of the vote to Maduro's 30 percent. Independent statistical analyses found the CNE's announced results "statistically improbable." International parallel vote tabulations confirmed González's victory.

The Carter Center, a respected election-monitoring organization founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, examined the evidence and issued a damning conclusion: they could not verify the CNE's results, and the election had failed to meet international democratic standards.

The United Nations went further, declaring there was "no precedent in contemporary democratic elections" for announcing a winner without providing tabulated results.

Operation Tun Tun

The Maduro government responded to the crisis not with transparency, but with force.

Protests erupted across Venezuela as citizens took to the streets to demand that their votes be counted. The government's answer was a crackdown they called "Operation Tun Tun"—named for the sound of knocking on doors. Security forces fanned out across the country, arresting protesters, opposition activists, and anyone suspected of dissent.

The name itself carried an unmistakable message: we know where you live, and we're coming.

Rather than cede to international pressure, Maduro asked the Supreme Court—the same court his allies had packed years earlier—to "audit and approve" the election results. On August 22nd, the court delivered exactly the verdict everyone expected, rubber-stamping the CNE's announcement without requiring any actual evidence.

For Edmundo González, the situation grew increasingly perilous. On September 2nd, Venezuelan prosecutors issued an arrest warrant charging him with "usurpation of functions, falsification of public documents, instigation to disobey the law, conspiracy, and association." The man who had apparently won the election by thirty-seven points was now a fugitive in his own country.

González took refuge in the Spanish Embassy in Caracas. On September 7th, he flew to Spain, where he was granted asylum. He remains there today, watching from exile as the government that stole his election cements its hold on power.

The World Responds

The international reaction to Venezuela's stolen election split along predictable lines.

The United States, the European Union, and most Latin American democracies refused to accept the CNE's claimed results. Many explicitly recognized González as the rightful winner. The Organization of American States rejected the official outcome. Ten Latin American countries condemned the Supreme Court's ruling.

On the other side stood a familiar coalition: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba all congratulated Maduro on his "victory." These authoritarian governments had no interest in establishing precedents about electoral fraud, and every interest in supporting a fellow autocrat.

The European Union, notably, stopped short of recognizing González as president—a departure from 2019, when many European nations had recognized Juan Guaidó. The calculus had changed. Guaidó's parallel government had ultimately failed to dislodge Maduro, and European leaders seemed reluctant to repeat the exercise.

How Venezuela Got Here

The 2024 election didn't happen in a vacuum. It was the culmination of more than a decade of democratic collapse.

The story begins in 2013, when Hugo Chávez died and Nicolás Maduro narrowly won election as his successor. Venezuela's economy was already struggling, but what followed was catastrophic. Hyperinflation destroyed the currency. Shortages left store shelves empty. Crime spiraled out of control. By some estimates, more than seven million Venezuelans—roughly a quarter of the population—fled the country.

In 2015, Venezuelans handed the opposition a massive victory in National Assembly elections. For a moment, it looked like the democratic system might be working. But Maduro had no intention of sharing power with an opposition legislature.

In the weeks before the new assembly was seated, the outgoing pro-government majority rushed to pack the Supreme Court with Maduro loyalists. This packed court then stripped three opposition lawmakers of their seats, citing vague "irregularities"—just enough to deny the opposition the supermajority it would have needed to challenge Maduro directly.

When protests erupted in 2017, Maduro didn't compromise. Instead, he convened a "constituent assembly" to rewrite the constitution, stacking it with government supporters after the opposition boycotted the rigged election. This new body effectively stripped the elected National Assembly of all power.

The 2018 presidential election was held months ahead of schedule, with major opposition parties banned from participating. Maduro was declared the winner in what was widely recognized as a sham. Juan Guaidó's attempt to establish a parallel government in 2019 generated international headlines but ultimately failed to dislodge Maduro from power.

By the time the 2024 election arrived, Venezuela's democratic institutions had been hollowed out. The electoral council, the Supreme Court, the military, the prosecutors—all answered to Maduro. The only power the opposition had left was the moral authority of its popular support.

And that, it turned out, wasn't enough.

January 2025

On January 10, 2025, Nicolás Maduro was sworn in for his third term as president of Venezuela. He stood in Caracas, surrounded by loyalists and uniformed officers, taking an oath to uphold a constitution his government had spent years systematically violating.

In Madrid, Edmundo González—the man who by all available evidence won the election by nearly forty points—watched from exile. María Corina Machado remained in Venezuela, her movements restricted, her freedom precarious. Thousands of Venezuelans sat in jail cells, arrested during Operation Tun Tun for the crime of demanding that their votes be counted.

The 2024 Venezuelan presidential election will likely be studied for years as a case study in how authoritarian regimes steal elections in the modern era. The opposition did everything right: they organized, they united behind a single candidate, they deployed poll watchers, they collected evidence, they published their findings for the world to see. They proved, beyond any reasonable doubt, that they had won.

It didn't matter. When the institutions of democracy have been captured by those willing to abuse them, when the courts serve the ruler rather than the law, when security forces answer to a dictator rather than the constitution, popular will alone cannot prevail. The Venezuelan opposition won the election. They just couldn't claim the prize.

What Makes This Different

Electoral fraud is, sadly, not uncommon in the world. What made Venezuela's 2024 election unusual was its brazenness.

In most stolen elections, governments at least attempt to manufacture plausible results. They stuff ballot boxes, manipulate voter rolls, or intimidate voters before they reach the polls. The fraud happens in the shadows, deniable if not entirely hidden.

Venezuela's approach was different. The government didn't try to hide what it was doing. It simply announced a result that contradicted all available evidence and dared the world to do something about it. When challenged, it provided no data, no verification, no pretense of legitimacy. The message was clear: we have the power, and power is all that matters.

This represents something of a new chapter in authoritarian playbooks. In an era when technology makes electoral fraud harder to conceal—when citizens can organize digitally, when parallel vote counts can be conducted in real time, when evidence can be uploaded to the internet before it can be destroyed—some regimes have simply stopped trying to conceal their theft. They've calculated that raw power, backed by loyal security forces and a cooperative judiciary, can withstand any amount of documented evidence.

For Venezuela, they calculated correctly. At least for now.

The Road Ahead

What happens next in Venezuela remains deeply uncertain. Maduro has secured his third term, but he governs a country in economic ruin with a population that overwhelmingly voted against him. The opposition remains organized but leaderless, its candidates either exiled or imprisoned. International isolation continues, but international pressure has repeatedly failed to dislodge Maduro.

Some observers hold out hope that fractures within the ruling coalition—between military leaders, civilian politicians, and business interests—might eventually create opportunities for change. Others point to the continued exodus of Venezuelans as evidence that the country is slowly bleeding out, its most capable citizens fleeing to Colombia, Peru, the United States, and beyond.

The millions of Venezuelans who lined up to vote on July 28, 2024, knew the odds were against them. They voted anyway. They collected the receipts. They proved they won. History will record their courage, even if their government refused to acknowledge their choice.

Sometimes democracy loses. The tragedy of Venezuela is that on that Sunday in July, democracy won at the ballot box—and lost everywhere else.