This is not a “conspiracy tale” built around an improbable news story. In the case of Venezuela’s elections, the belief that the results come from a massive electoral fraud does not spring from the opposition’s reported evidence. It begins long before, with a regime that has committed every kind of abuse to guarantee absolute control over the voting machinery. This is the chronicle of a silent coup, aligned with the white dictatorship that Venezuela endures under a pocket-sized revolutionary who commands all the levers of power.
These pretexts alone would be reason enough for the world to deem the electoral process illegitimate. The systematic violation of opposition rights has been as meticulous as it has been relentless. It is not only the long list of opposition figures jailed, or the ongoing repression that has led Venezuela to the International Criminal Court. Even when efforts are made to whitewash the repression and present the democratic machinery as functioning, abuses accumulate with impunity. The most flagrant case is the neutralization of the opposition’s emblematic leader, Maria Corina Machado, who had led the 2014 demonstrations, after the other major opposition figure Leopoldo Lopez was detained.
Having become the hope to topple the regime, she was subjected to a process that barred her from public life for 15 years without a trial — even though in principle ineligibility requires a formal sentence. When she designated another candidate, Corina Yoris, she too was barred. The individual who led the ineligibility process was the controller general Elvis Amoroso, a chavismo deputy who now chairs the National Electoral Council.
With the leaders weakened by ineligibilities, the regime ordered a wave of detentions against opponents, including 77 campaign coordinators arrested in July as the electoral process had already begun. Several of Machado’s close allies fled to the Argentine embassy after being charged with treason to the homeland. Sanctions were also imposed on restaurants, hotels, and venues that hosted opposition events. To seal the abuse, the regime worked hard to deter exile voting, which largely favored the opposition, using a range of draconian obstacles. Of the 7.7 million Venezuelans living abroad (per UNHCR data), only 69,189 registered to vote.
Yet as the opposition appeared unstoppable, it seems clear that the final blow arrived through direct manipulation of the results. Protests, demonstrations, and a surge of denunciations are likely, but it is hard to imagine Maduro stepping down from power.
Why is that possible? First, because he has built a corrupt structure that has made him immensely rich. Second, because he faces a vast set of criminal charges — including torture, killings, and forced disappearances — documented by the UN High Commissioner and investigated by the International Criminal Court. The risk of extradition, imprisonment, or forced exile is very high. Moreover, charges of drug trafficking are being investigated by the U.S. DEA, with Maduro and Cabello named by the New York Prosecutor as heads of a “corrupt and violent narcoterrorist conspiracy” linking the Solares Cartel and Colombian FARC. Since 2020, the U.S. State Department has offered a $15 million reward for his capture. Finally, Maduro has cultivated a tight network of ties with Russia, China, and Iran, the three nations providing protection and advancing interests in Venezuela.
Particularly notable is Iran’s influence, which has dispatched hundreds of members of the Quds Force and the Revolutionary Guard to the region and has managed to dominate much of the criminal structure in the Triple Frontier. Consequently, too many international and local interests are invested in preventing the regime from falling. This was not an election conducted in a democracy. It was a clash between a mafia-like structure and a citizenry that opposed it, and in such a conflict, the mafia often prevails.