Breaking News: Carter Center and OAS announce recall's audit
By Miguel Octavio
The Carter Center and the OAS have just announced that there will be an audit tomorrow of 150 voting centes, chosen at random. The random choosing will be done in the presence of observers of the OAS, the Carter Center, the Government, the opposition and the CNE. Then, the ballot boxes with the paper ballots will be picked up at the garrisons where they are being held. They will be taken to the CNE where in the presence of the same observers, they will be counted and compared to the result derived from the readout of the machines as signed and witnessed by those that were present in the voting centers.
It is still not clear to me whether they will check centers or "mesas". Let me explain, each center had a number of "mesas" or tables. Each table had a number of "cuadernos" or notebooks, where the list of voters was included. Each cuaderno voted in a single machine. But in the center where I voted, all notebooks from all tables deposited the paper ballots in a single box.
Carter was very emphatic that they trusted the results, but had requested this to dissipate any doubts. However, a reporter was very sneaky at the end and he fell for it. She asked that what assurance did we have that the ballot boxes themselves were not tampered with. He said that the was sure the military was taking proper care of them. However, there have been reports, some of them visual, that there are boxes in places like government offices. In one case, some guy at the office said he was "guarding it" there. Well, so much for Carter's assurance.
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