To understand the electoral landscape facing Venezuela in 2025, it is essential to briefly recap and recall the most recent election, the presidential election held on July 28, 2024. That event, whose formal objective is to guarantee respect for citizens’ votes and that the results obtained are respected, ultimately resulted in the National Electoral Council (CNE in spanish) declaring Nicolas Maduro’s supposed victory by seizing all evidence of the complex security mechanisms that guarantee the integrity of the contest, the voting records themselves, and preventing the conduct of the required audits.
In this context, followed by a massive wave of repression that has led to the imprisonment of numerous national political leaders and regional activists, Nicolas Maduro has called parliamentary and regional elections to be held on May 25. In this way, without having presented the most basic tangible evidence of the outcome of the 2024 election, without having processed the countless allegations of fraud filed with the CNE, without having responded to the fact that the opposition publicly presented more than 80% of the voting records, which grant it a landslide victory, the party-state seeks to further the illegitimate consolidation of its government with the election of all members of the National Assembly, state governors, and national representatives.
This new election, however, brings no improvement in the mechanisms designed to guarantee a credible result, and, on the contrary, repeats and exacerbates the numerous irregularities that occurred in 2024.
On the one hand, the election is being held with serious flaws in the electoral schedule, which was published late, and the publication of the voting records on the electoral body’s website has been removed. It should be noted that this website, after decades of operation, has been deactivated since the fraudulent 2024 election. Thus, the body’s decisions are only known through publication in the electoral gazette or, very frequently, through public announcements made by political leaders of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The deactivation of the website has extremely serious consequences for the holding of electoral events; citizens lack direct access to such basic information as verification of their polling station, the voter registry, or any changes that may arise for logistical reasons. The argument put forward by the CNE regarding this matter is that the website was hacked, taking it offline and preventing the publication of the results of July 28. It seems, then, that it has taken the electoral authority nine months to create a website.
Additionally, the date for the event is arbitrary, constantly changed, and is taking place when the current elected officials’ terms are still several months away.
A significant factor is the holding of the election within the framework of the recent declaration of an economic emergency throughout the national territory, which grants the executive branch extraordinary powers, thereby expanding control over state bodies through a legal legitimacy that is clearly inconvenient for a process that must be balanced. In a country where the separation of powers is nonexistent, it bodes ill for the government to resort to expanding its powers and suspending guarantees.
Furthermore, due to the energy crisis, the public administration will be open two days a week, so any requests citizens may make to the electoral authority will have minimal chance of receiving a response.
In short, this situation reflects the worsening electoral conditions that existed in 2024. Not only is it evident that the government led by Nicolas Maduro is making no efforts to improve conditions and respect electoral guarantees, but it is also deepening the opacity of the electoral body. This opacity is far from being a product of incompetence: it is a plan aimed at fostering voter discouragement, stripping the vote of its role as a citizen expression of democracy-building, and paving the way for—once again—announcing the result that suits their political calculations. In short, the vote has become a mechanism for manipulating and controlling the population.
Therefore, the vigilant eye of the international community must contribute to the denunciation that broad sectors of civil society have made, demanding respect for the standards of a free, transparent, and genuine election, including the 2024 presidential results, established in the constitutional framework and electoral legislation. An electoral solution is the only path to the re-democratization of Venezuela and the overcoming of the dire social and economic situation the country is currently experiencing.