"Chávez himself read my findings on potential elections theft – to his nation on his TV show – and then he moved swiftly, establishing an election system that Jimmy Carter, who has headed vote observer teams in 92 nations, called, 'an election process that is the best in the world'.

Here's how it works: every Venezuelan voter gets TWO ballots. One is electronic, the second is a paper print-out of the touch-screen ballot, which the voter reviews, authorises, then places in a locked ballot-box. An astounding 54 percent of the boxes are chosen at random to open and check against the computer tally. It's as close to a bulletproof count as you can get." [1]

In the face of significant US interference Venezuala could have gone extremely dictatorial, but it seems they went the other way and implemented a more secure voting process than in many other countries where electronic voting is used.

[1] http://www.gregpalast.com/did-chavez-pick-steal-the-election...

The way I understand it, the ballot by itself does not unique ly identify the voter -- however in addition to the physical and electronic ballots, an electoral notebook records the vote and links the ballot to the voter's identity. As part of their "audit", The CNE refused to include the information from the notebooks, and thus irregularities such as an individual voting multiple times as a deceased person would not be able to be detected.

> thus irregularities such as an individual voting multiple times as a deceased person would not be able to be detected.

That doesn't seem correct. Voters need to provide identification and their fingerprints (!) as part of the voting process, so the risk of these irregularities would be much lower than, for instance, the United States.

The voters do provide this identification, but this information is recorded in the electoral notebooks, which the CNE does not want to include as part of the audit.

I have serious concerns about Chavez policies, but accepting US media portrayals of Venezuela is about as naive as taking Chinese state owned media at face value: Their reports could be accurate, but you won't know without comparing it with alternatives.

The Economist is rather British, and is not known for toeing the party line of any country.