I wonder how they know so much about the possibility?
Note: This woman also writes for he Wall Street Journal.
Observers Rush to Judgment in Caracas
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
August 20, 2004; Page A13
When Jimmy Carter went to Cuba in 2002, Fidel reveled in the photo-ops with a former U.S. president. Mr. Carter seemed to think he was heroically "engaging" the Cuban despot. But in the documentary "Dissident," celluloid captures something most Americans didn't see: Castro giggling sardonically as Mr. Carter lectures the Cuban politburo on democracy. That foreshadowed what happened when the media splash ended and the Nobel laureate went home: Dissidents he went to "help" today languish in gulag punishment cells.
SNIP...
The problem was that the "observers" hadn't actually observed the election results. Messrs. Carter and Gaviria were only allowed to make a "quick count," that is look at the tally sheets spat out by a sample of voting machines. They were not allowed to check this against ballots the machines issued to voters as confirmation that their votes were properly registered.
If there was fraud, as many Venezuelans now suspect, it could have been discovered if the ballots didn't match the computer tallies. The tallies alone were meaningless. The problem was clear by Tuesday but it didn't stop the State Department spokesman Adam Ereli from chiming in. "The people of Venezuela have spoken," he proclaimed.
Mr. Carter marveled at the huge turnout on Sunday. Venezuelans, who have been voting two-to-one against Chávez in opinion polls, waited in absurdly long lines to cast more meaningful votes on electronic machines. But did the machine really record the vote as registered on the paper ballot?
According to experts, it is relatively simple to tamper with encryption codes in electronic voting machines. American Enterprise Institute resident scholar John Lott says, "You can easily write a program that tells the voting machine to record something different in its memory than what it prints out on the receipt that is to be dropped in the ballot box."SNIP...
There is some speculation that Messrs. Carter and Gaviria threw a veil over a gross deception on the grounds that it will prevent further violence. But Americans have a right to expect a sterner approach from the administration of George W. Bush. State's endorsement of this referendum without a fair audit is a sorry betrayal of not only the Venezuelan people but American ideals. It is tantamount to yielding to terrorism. Observing Washington's supine reaction, Chávez will not hesitate to escalate his efforts to restore authoritarianism on the South American continent.
http://www.petroleumworld.com/SunOPF082204.htm