The National Electoral Council is one of the five branches of government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela that was designed to be independent. It is the institution that has the responsibility of overseeing and guaranteeing the transparency of all elections and referendums in Venezuela at the local, regional, and national levels. The creation of the CNE was ratified in Venezuela's 1999 constitutional referendum. Following the election of Nicolás Maduro – Hugo Chávez's handpicked successor – into the presidency, the CNE has been described as being pro-Maduro.
The Venezuelan recall referendum of 15 August 2004 was a referendum to determine whether Hugo Chávez, then President of Venezuela, should be recalled from office. The recall referendum was announced on 8 June 2004 by the National Electoral Council (CNE) after the Venezuelan opposition succeeded in collecting the number of signatures required by the 1999 Constitution to effect a recall. The result of the referendum was not to recall Chávez.
Elections in Venezuela are held at a national level for the President of Venezuela as head of state and head of government, and for a unicameral legislature. The President of Venezuela is elected for a six-year term by direct election plurality voting, and is eligible for re-election. The National Assembly (Asamblea Nacional) has 165 members (diputados), elected for five-year terms using a mixed-member majoritarian representation system. Elections also take place at state level and local level.
Presidential elections were held in Venezuela on 3 December 2006 to elect a president for a six-year term to begin on 10 January 2007. The contest was primarily between incumbent President Hugo Chávez, and Zulia Governor Manuel Rosales of the opposition party A New Era.
María Corina Machado Parisca is a Venezuelan opposition politician and industrial engineer who served as an elected member of the National Assembly of Venezuela from 2011 to 2014. Machado was the founder and former leader of the Venezuelan volunteer civil organization Súmate, alongside Alejandro Plaz. In 2018, she was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women.
Regional elections were held in Venezuela on 23 November 2008 to choose 22 governors and 2 metropolitan mayors. The candidates were selected for a term beginning in 2008 and ending in 2012, when the next regional elections will be held. The 2008 regional elections were the second during the government of Hugo Chávez Frías and the first since he founded the United Socialist Party.
The 2010 parliamentary election in Venezuela took place on 26 September 2010 to elect the 165 deputies to the National Assembly. Venezuelan opposition parties, which had boycotted the previous election thus allowing the governing Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) to gain a two-thirds super majority, participated in the election through the Coalition for Democratic Unity (MUD). In 2007 the Fifth Republic Movement dissolved and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela was formed as the leading government party. Nationally, the popular vote was split equally between PSUV and MUD, but PSUV won a majority of the first-past-the-post seats and consequently retained a substantial majority in the Assembly, although falling short of both two-thirds and three-fifths super majority marks.
Regional elections were held in Venezuela on 31 October 2004 to elect 22 governors and 2 metropolitan mayors for a four-year term beginning in 2004 and ending in 2008, when the next regional elections were held. The elections were originally scheduled for 26 September 2004, but faced technical issues and an application for annulment requested by the opposition, and were held under high political pressure after the events of the recall referendum of August 2004. The ongoing political crisis in the country and the proximity of the two electoral processes marked the environment of the elections, which were won by the candidates supported by the president, Hugo Chavez.
The Democratic Unity Roundtable was a catch-all electoral coalition of Venezuelan political parties formed in January 2008 to unify the opposition to President Hugo Chávez's United Socialist Party of Venezuela in the 2010 Venezuelan parliamentary election. A previous opposition umbrella group, the Coordinadora Democrática, had collapsed after the failure of the 2004 Venezuelan recall referendum.
Tibisay Lucena Ramírez was a Venezuelan politician, president of the National Electoral Council (CNE) between 2006 and 2020, one of the five branches of government of Venezuela. Since 2017, Lucena was sanctioned by several countries for her role in undermining democracy and human rights in the country.
Presidential elections were held in Venezuela on 14 April 2013 following the death of President Hugo Chávez on 5 March 2013. Nicolás Maduro—who had assumed the role of acting president since Chávez's death—was declared winner with a narrow victory over his opponent Henrique Capriles, the Governor of Miranda. Capriles had run in the previous election less than a year before, losing to Chávez by an 11-point margin. This time the margin of victory was much smaller, and thus became the closest presidential election of the country since the 1968 election.
Parliamentary elections were held in Venezuela on 6 December 2015 to elect the 164 deputies and three indigenous representatives of the National Assembly. They were the fourth parliamentary elections to take place after the 1999 constitution, which abolished the bicameral system in favour of a unicameral parliament, and the first to take place after the death of President Hugo Chávez. Despite predictions from the opposition of a possible last-minute cancellation, the elections took place as scheduled, with the majority of polls showing the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) holding a wide lead over the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and its wider alliance, the Great Patriotic Pole (GPP).
Presidential elections were held in Venezuela on 20 May 2018, with incumbent Nicolás Maduro being declared re-elected for a second six-year term. The original electoral date was scheduled for December 2018 but was subsequently pulled ahead to 22 April before being pushed back to 20 May. Some analysts described the poll as a sham election, as many prominent opposition parties had been barred from participating in it. The elections had the lowest voter turnout in Venezuela's democratic era.
Regional elections were held in Venezuela on 15 October 2017 to elect the executive position of all 23 federal entities. This marked the first state executive election not held on the same date as elections for state legislatures, and the second separate from municipal elections. They were the 9th regional elections held in Venezuela since 1989.
Municipal elections were held in Venezuela on 10 December 2017, to elect 335 mayors throughout Venezuela, as well as the governor of the state of Zulia. This was the first municipal election held since 2013, when elections were delayed from 2012 following the death of Hugo Chávez. The election resulted in many members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela being elected as heads of municipal governments throughout Venezuela.
Parliamentary elections were held in Venezuela on 6 December 2020. Aside from the 167 deputies of the National Assembly who are eligible to be re-elected, the new National Electoral Council president announced that the assembly would increase by 110 seats, for a total of 277 deputies to be elected.
Presidential elections are scheduled to be held in Venezuela in 28 July 2024 to choose a president for a six-year term beginning on 10 January 2025. Leading candidates of the Venezuelan opposition have been disqualified from participating in the election during its campaign or in previous elections. In June 2023, the leading candidate María Corina Machado was barred from participating by the Venezuelan government for alleged political crimes. This move has been regarded by the opposition as violation of political human rights and has been condemned by international bodies like the Organization of American States, the European Union, and Human Rights Watch, as well as countries such as Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Mexico, Paraguay, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay.
Regional and municipal elections were held in Venezuela on 21 November 2021. In the elections, all executive and legislative positions of the 23 federal entities, as well as that of the 335 municipalities of the country, were renewed.
A process to hold a recall referendum to vote on recalling Maduro was started on May 2, 2016. On that date, opposition leaders in Venezuela handed in a petition to the National Electoral Council (CNE) that started a several stage process. The Venezuelan government stated that if enough signatures were collected, a recall vote would be held no sooner than 2017. On 21 October 2016, the CNE suspended the referendum days before preliminary signature-gatherings were to be held.
Venezuelan opposition to the Chavista governments of former President Hugo Chávez and current President Nicolás Maduro, commonly referred to as the Venezuelan opposition, or sometimes, anti-Chavismo, is a political umbrella term used to describe political, social and religious movements that have opposed Chavismo, and the associated Bolivarian Revolution political process since 2 February 1999.
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