Analysis of voting data from the recent Venezuela referendum

On August 15, 2004, Venezuelans voted in a national referendum, to decide whether to recall President Hugo Chávez from office. Afterward, CNE, the Venezuelan electoral authority (which supports Chávez), announced that roughly 58% of voters had voted against the recall, so that Chávez would stay in office. The election was performed using Smartmatic electronic voting machines that tally votes electronically and produce a voter verifiable paper backup of each vote. Opposition figures have accused the CNE of election fraud.Some of the fraud allegations can be evaluated only by a careful investigation and audit of election procedures and documents. We are not in a position to perform such an investigation, but we hope that others can do so. Other fraud allegations, however, would− if they were true− create statistical anomalies in the reported election results. This subset of fraud allegations can be evaluated by statistical analysis.