National Electoral Council (Venezuela)
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Template:Politics of Venezuela Image:Logo CNE.jpg The National Electoral Council (Spanish: Consejo Nacional Electoral), or CNE, is the institution in charge of all electoral processes that take place in Venezuela.
Its five principal members are elected by a majority vote of the unicameral National Assembly (Asamblea Nacional de Venezuela) and all its rulings have to be agreed by a majority (three out of five) of these principal members. The current CNE was not chosen by this method because the national assembly could not agree on the candidates proposed for the post of principal member. The Supreme Court of Venezuela decided to let a 5 member board of principal members of the CNE stand as electoral authorities for a presidential recall referendum scheduled for 2003 but only on a temporary basis. The members were divided along political lines 3 members being pro-Chavez and 2 members aligned with the opposition movement. This board of principal members of the CNE should have been replaced by duly appointed principal members months ago but since the government's grip on all the political institutions of Venezuela has tightened this has not occurred.
At present the principal members are Jorge Rodríguez (President), Sobella Mejias (Vice President), Tibisay Lucena, Oscar Battaglini and Oscar León Uzcategui. See: CNE Profiles The CNE has been on the center of the current political debate on Venezuela, as the opposition has tried several times to oust the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez using a recall or referendum.
On August 15, 2004, after trying for over two years to oust the president, the CNE held a national recall for the presidency, which was won by the president. The OAS and the Carter Center have validated the fairness of the recall, but the Venezuelan opposition insists that fraud took place and even managed to obtain evidence but failed to prove the accusation. See: 2004 Venezuelan presidential recall.
Parliamentary elections were held on December 4th, 2005 with an abstention rate of more than 75% as all opposition political parties withdrew from the electoral contest after tests performed before international observers including the OAS and the EU proved that the complicated electronic voting system could not guarantee the secrecy of the voters intention. The reports of both observers strongly objected to the intricacies of the current voting system, the strong bias that the current board of principal members of the CNE has shown towards the Chavez government and to the fact that a legal board of the CNE has not been chosen among several other critical comments.
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es:Consejo Nacional Electoral (Venezuela) fr:Conseil national électoral