Venezuela’s Supreme Court has backed incumbent President Nicolas Maduro’s claims that he beat opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez in the disputed July 28 presidential election.
The court, which includes Maduro loyalists, said Thursday that after reviewing materials supplied by the electoral authority, it agreed that Maduro had won a third six-year term.
The electoral authority, which declared Maduro the winner of the vote within hours of the polls closing, reported that the president won more than half of the votes, but it has not published any results.
The opposition claims that Gonzalez won the election. It backed its claims with voting tallies that it said were gathered from 80% of the country’s 30,000 voting booths showing that Gonzalez won by a more than 2-to-1 ratio.
The Associated Press reports “official tally sheets printed by each voting machine carry a QR code that make it easy for anyone to verify the results and are almost impossible to replicate.”
Deadly protests following the election have resulted in what some human rights groups have described as a crackdown on dissent.
