Warehouse Safeguarding Venezuelan Voting Machines Catches Fire
Warehouse Safeguarding Venezuelan Voting Machines Catches Fire
(Bloomberg) -- Part of a warehouse that stores Venezuela’s voting machines caught fire, though the cause and extent of any damage was unclear.
The fire broke out at the property of Venezuela’s electoral authority Saturday, according to Tibisay Lucena, president of the National Electoral Council.
“I’m at the warehouse where we have the electoral infrastructure of the country,” she said on state television. She said there’s expected to be “some damage to our electoral infrastructure.”
Lucena has asked the authorities for a thorough investigation. The country’s political standstill has dragged on for more than a year between President Nicolas Maduro and Juan Guaido, who, as president of the National Assembly, announced in January 2019 that he had assumed powers atop a caretaker government pending new elections.
An effort by Guaido and his supporters to seize power at the end of April fizzled, however. More recently, Maduro and his loyalists attempted a takeover of the National Assembly, Venezuela’s last remaining democratic institution. More than 50 countries recognized Guaido as president.
The warehouse of the Electoral Council in Filas de Mariches, in the east of Caracas, houses more than 40,000 machines that are used to vote in the automated elections of the oil country, said Anibal Sanchez, an electoral consultant who has been an opposition technician in several elections.
This year, parliamentary elections must be held in Venezuela, in which the opposition has not said whether it will participate because of worries whether the voting will be transparent.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Vasquez in Caracas Office at avasquez45@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Patricia Laya at playa2@bloomberg.net, Linus Chua, Ian Fisher
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