Apropops yesterday's obsession with Venezuela, Chavez cleared it by a good margin. The opposition had a pre-set plan to cry foul; it looked like they had pre-printed signs saying "fraud!" Winning by more than a million votes in an election with 75%+ turnout isn't really fraud. The opposition says its argument is based on exit polls, but I also read yesterday that both parties both swore off exit polling. Kind of a bad-faith move if you ask me.

Bonus question: how long will it take the rabid right to trash Jimmy Carter for observing the election and certifying this result? Looks like negative 8 hours.

On exit polling, The LA Times has it:

Official results were expected today. Although Venezuelan regulations forbade release of results from independent voter surveys until the outcome was announced, the New York-based polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates forecast a landslide vote to oust Chavez.

The firm's exit poll of more than 20,000 voters suggested that 59% of an estimated 8 million votes cast by early evening were against Chavez.

In fairness, there was another exit poll done by a Venezuelan PR company that showed Chavez winning by 55%. And then there's also this, from the Christian Science Monitor:

Before the referendum, many observers had also questioned the electoral council's decision to use an electronic voting system which had not been used in any previous election, and which they said was vulnerable to manipulation. As well, they decried the revelation that a government agency owned an interest in the company which developed the machines' software and had an employee on the company's board of directors. The government later promised to sell its interest and remove its employee from the board, though it is unclear if they actually did.

At least their electronic voting machines print paper recipts. Seems like with the margin of victory in the million-votes range that any fraud would have to be truly massive, and it aught to be tough to either pull off that kind of fraud, or credibly frame anyone of falsifying that many ballots. Real election fraud happens when the margins are closer, or where the system is obviously biased (e.g. cops harassing people as the go to polls, poll tax, etc). Unless a manual spot count of paper recipts shows disagreement with the electronic tally, it would seem like this election is settled.