VENEZUELA: "President Nicolás Maduro has won Venezuela's presidential election, according to partial results published by the electoral council. The head of the National Electoral Council, Elvis Amoroso, who is a close ally of Mr Maduro, said that with 80% of votes counted, President Maduro had 51.2% of the vote, compared to 44.2% for his main rival. The Venezuelan opposition has alleged widespread fraud in the counting of votes, and has vowed to challenge the result. It had united behind candidate Edmundo González in order to unseat Mr Maduro after 11 years in power.
The opposition deployed thousands of witnesses to polling stations across the country to be able to announce its own vote count. However, a spokeswoman for the coalition led by Mr González said that their witnesses had been "forced to leave" at many polling stations.
Opinion polls had given Mr González a wide lead over Mr Maduro.
Voting in Venezuela is electronic. Voters punch in a button assigned to their preferred candidate on a voting machine. The electronic results are sent to the CNE headquarters, but the machine also prints out a paper receipt which is then placed in a ballot box. By law, parties are allowed to send witnesses to the count of these paper receipts carried out at each polling station, but many were prevented from doing so. The opposition said it had been given access to less than a third of the printed receipts."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz5rj2mzgevo