What do the opposition-collected voting tally sheets show in aggregate compared to the CNE’s announced totals?
Executive summary
The opposition’s scanned and tabulated tally sheets (actas) — collected from roughly 70–85% of polling stations and published in an open database — show challenger Edmundo González Urrutia winning by a large margin (about two-to-one in several tallies), with opposition tallies yielding roughly 10.2 million votes counted from the scanned actas and internal tallies reporting González at approximately 67% of the vote (~7.3 million in some tallies) versus the CNE’s proclamation of Nicolás Maduro as winner with about 51% (a result announced without publishing disaggregated table-by-table results) [1] [2] [3] [4]. The two data streams are in direct conflict: the opposition’s acta-based aggregate is verifiable in images and QR-code decodes, while the CNE has refused to release the detailed disaggregated tallies needed to reconcile the discrepancy [2] [5] [4].
1. What the opposition collected and how it aggregates to a different outcome
The opposition organized thousands of poll-watchers and volunteers to collect printed tally sheets from polling machines after polls closed — the long “chorizo” receipts that display per-machine totals, QR codes and signatures — and published images and a searchable database covering between about 73% and over 80% of polling stations (roughly 24,000–25,000 of ~30,000 stations) that, when decoded and programmatically tabulated, produced an aggregate of some 10.26 million votes and gave González a comfortable majority in the opposition dataset [6] [1] [2].
2. How that aggregate compares numerically to the CNE’s announced totals
Where the opposition’s acta-based aggregation shows González winning by a large margin (variously reported as ~67% of counted votes or a better-than-two-to-one edge) the CNE’s bulletin released in the early hours instead proclaimed Maduro the victor with a narrow majority; importantly, the CNE announced headline percentages and absolute totals without publishing the underlying disaggregated acta-by-acta figures that would allow independent reconciliation with the opposition’s dataset [3] [4] [5].
3. Independent verification and technical corroboration of the opposition aggregate
Independent outlets and analysts validated portions of the opposition dataset: news organizations and analysts decoded QR codes on the uploaded actas, and the Associated Press reported programmatic decoding of nearly 24,000 images representing about 79% of machines and produced a tabulation consistent with the opposition’s aggregated totals (not with the CNE bulletin) [2] [1]. Multiple civil and regional bodies explicitly requested the CNE publish the same disaggregated data so the two tallies could be reconciled [5].
4. Caveats, counterclaims and unresolved chain-of-custody questions
The CNE and government officials alleged a cyberattack and have disputed the oppositional narrative, and pro-government commentators and some electoral observers have dismissed the opposition’s claims as spectacle or questioned the completeness and chain-of-custody of opposition-collected actas; the TSJ and other pro-regime bodies have signaled willingness to authenticate records but the CNE has not published its table-by-table results to permit independent cross-checking [4] [7] [8]. Analysts note that actas are printed before electronic transmission — meaning the paper records are the authoritative local record — yet legal and procedural disputes over collection, possible interference at polling sites, and whether the opposition’s sampling is fully representative remain points of contention [9] [10].
5. Bottom line: aggregate divergence and why it matters
In aggregate, the opposition-collected tally sheets — verified in large part by independent decoding and covering a substantial majority of polling stations — produce an outcome that contradicts the CNE’s announced results by a wide margin, showing González as the apparent winner while the CNE proclaimed Maduro victorious without releasing the disaggregated acta-level data needed to reconcile the two sets; that unresolved divergence is the central factual dispute driving regional diplomatic reactions and legal challenges [2] [1] [5] [4].