CIA expert claims Chávez rigged 2004 Venezuela vote

Hugo Chávez

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
In a development that will undoubtedly worsen relations between Washington and Caracas, a CIA expert has accused Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez of rigging the 2004 recall referendum. Speaking before the US Election Assistance Commission in Orlando, Florida, CIA cybersecurity specialist Steve Stigall said that all networked election systems are inherently insecure, and gave the 2004 Venezuelan referendum as an example. Stigall claimed that president Chávez fixed the referendum results through the Venezuelan government’s control of the electronic ballot systems firm that oversaw the voting. He also pointed to a programming analysis of the voting systems by a group of anti-Chávez mathematicians, who allegedly discovered “a very subtle algorithm that appeared to adjust the vote in Chavez’s favor”. Read more of this post