Venezuela has been considered a democracy since its last dictator stepped down in 1958, and unlike other Latin American nations, did not fall under the control of military dictators in the 70's and 80's. For this reason, the international community touted Venezuela as a model democracy in the region.  But the reality was far more complicated.

The Art of Exclusion and the Case of the Missing Vote Venezuelan leaders had always favored political stability over actual democratic participation.  In order to stave off the rise of "fringe" movements on the left and right, the country's top centrist parties entered into a power sharing agreement which effectively shut out voices considered extreme from participating in politics.  While this arrangement, known as Puntofijismo, helped prevent authoritarian right-wing governments from taking power, it also created an insurmountable barrier for political leaders who spoke on behalf of Venezuela's impoverished majority.

The results were profound.  Elections were run by the two dominant political parties and even the election results were calculated by party officers. The phrase "acta mata voto," which roughly translates to "the tally sheet trumps the vote," entered the popular lexicon as party leaders notoriously divided up votes for third parties between themselves.  The fact that audits of the elections and voter registry were never performed made fraud even easier.  To further complicate things the National Electoral Council (CNE), the body responsible for overseeing the elections, was part of the executive branch and viewed more as a group of party yes men than an independent body of technical experts. 

Due to the government's political and economic allegiance to the elite rather than to the general population, voter disenfranchisement was widespread.  Under Puntofijismo voting was time-consuming and difficult for the poor largely because they lacked the resources needed to exercise their rights.  To register to vote a birth certificate was needed, hard to come by unless you were born in a hospital or private clinic, usually located in an urban area.  If you were born in a rural part of the country this was even more difficult to obtain because travel to the hospital was usually costly and out of reach for most.  This denied the poor their rights as citizens and marginalized their communities from the electoral process altogether. 

During this period a small clique of political leaders controlled virtually all of the political power-not to mention the oil wealth-the temptation for corruption was enormous, and most politicians succumbed. The result was an elite political class that passed legislation favoring their colleagues and families, and a rapid decline in participation by average Venezuelans, who understandably assumed that political participation, even voting, was a waste of time.

Civil Unrest Grips the Nation

Things began to change in the late 1980's and early 1990's as oil prices plummeted and thousands of working class Venezuelans fell into deep poverty.  As the ruling parties tried to stabilize the economy, they relied heavily on the advice of international lending institutions who were more interested in Venezuelan stock ratings than the lives of the average Venezuelan.  At the advice of the International Monetary Fund, the elites stripped away much of the social safety net that poor Venezuelans relied on to survive, and the country plunged into chaos.

Without access to political power, poor Venezuelans took to the streets. One massive riot in Caracas in 1989 was suppressed violently by the government. Although official body counts were never announced, human rights groups estimate that as many as 3,000 Venezuelans were gunned down on the city streets in less than a week, their bodies dumped into mass graves.

This event, known as the Caracazo, forced political leaders to re-evaluate their corrupt and grossly inequitable system, if for no other reason than to stop widespread rebellion. Modest democratic reforms were implemented to appease the citizenry, yet by the elections of 1998, not even half of all eligible Venezuelans were registered to vote.

That year, President Chavez swept into office on a rising tide of popular disaffection, becoming Venezuela's first president independent from the ruling parties since the 1950s. His political coalition had campaigned on a platform of voter inclusion, and he encouraged the National Assembly to quickly begin implementing real reforms. In the last six years, tremendous progress has been made, including:

Independent Elections Authorities: The National Elections Council (CNE under its Spanish acronym) became a separate branch of government, equal to the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, and its decision making board are now prohibited from membership in any specific political parties.  To ensure that the body was not politicized universities and civil society organizations would now participate in the process of nominating directors.  To date this new process has produced one of the most technically competent boards ever with the current President having more than ten years of experience in electoral issues and a recognized expert in issues of voter access.    

State of the Art Voting Equipment: Venezuela's 1998 Organic Law of Suffrage and Political Participation, passed before President Chavez took office, recognized that one of the nations major problems was fraud and required that elections be conducted with electronic voting machines.  In recent years, the newly reformed CNE has worked tirelessly to implement this.  The machines, it was thought, would provide a more credible vote count than manual methods because they produced both a paper and electronic trail, which could be easily audited.  Electronic voting machines record the votes in real-time, preventing the ballot box stuffing and vote trading of the old days.  Shortly after President Chavez became president however, it was suggested that the machines could be used to violate voter privacy and commit fraud.  Some of the Venezuelan government's harshest critics have noted however, that the trail produced by the machines guarantees Venezuelans a greater degree of security in their electoral process than many citizens of the United States.  Florida Senator Bill Nelson, in a recent hearing on Venezuela, remarked that "the State of Florida is not even doing that with a paper trail.   So maybe Venezuela will teach Florida something."

Universal Suffrage: The government has implemented a massive voter enfranchisement push known as "Mision Identidad" or "Identity Mission".  This program is essentially a widespread citizenship and get out the vote campaign rolled into one.  Millions of poor Venezuelans previously lacked official identification in the form of a birth certificate or national ID card, which prevented them from registering to vote.  Through the use of 84 regional offices and 7 mobile units, Mision Identidad has been able to provide and renew ID cards for more than 18 and a half million Venezuelans in less than three years.

These reforms have seen dramatic results.  In the presidential elections of 2000, only 11 million Venezuelans were registered to vote, and slightly over half of registered voters exercised their right.  By the 2004 recall referendum, 14 million were registered and 9 million participated in the vote, dropping the abstention rate from 43.6% to 30.1% in 2004.     

These far-reaching reforms, carried out with the support of the Chavez administration, have enabled all Venezuelans to actively participate in the electoral and political life of their nation for the first time in history.  Currently more than half of Venezuela's 26 million citizens are registered to vote and many more are officially recognized as citizens. It is easy to see why polls reflect Venezuelan enthusiasm in their democracy in such high numbers. After forty years of corruption and poverty, it seems that the case of the missing vote (and voter) has finally been solved. 

Olivia Burlingame Goumbri is the editor of The Venezuela Reader: The Building of a People's Democracy published by EPICA Books in 2005.