2004 Venezuelan recall referendum

2004 Venezuelan recall referendum

15 August 2004

Do you agree to annul the popular mandate granted through legitimate democratic elections to the citizen Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías as president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for the current presidential term?
Results
Choice
Votes %
Yes 3,989,008 40.75%
No 5,800,629 59.25%
Valid votes 9,789,637 99.74%
Invalid or blank votes 25,994 0.26%
Total votes 9,815,631 100.00%
Registered voters/turnout 14,037,900 69.92%

Results by state

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 (59% no).

The opposition Coordinadora Democrática declared that fraud had taken place and published a preliminary report supporting the conclusions.[1] The Carter Center, the electoral observers and other analysts denied fraud, saying the referendum was performed in a free and fair manner.[2][3][4][5][6] The Carter Center released a paper and statistical analysis at the request of the NGO Súmate to evaluate a study by Ricardo Hausmann and Roberto Rigobon, reaffirming the center's original conclusions.[7]

Statistical evaluations published in 2006 and 2011 concluded that fraud was committed.[8][9]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Observer teams endorse Venezuela vote results". NBC News. 16 August 2004. Retrieved 6 July 2013.
  3. ^ "CNN.com - Observers endorse Venezuela vote results - Aug 16, 2004". CNN. Archived from the original on 5 September 2004.
  4. ^ Carter Center (2005). Observing the Venezuela Presidential Recall Referendum: Comprehensive Report. Accessed 25 January 2006.
  5. ^ Jones, Bart (3 September 2004). "Venezuela: Divisions harden after Chávez victory". National Catholic Reporter. Retrieved 14 March 2009.
  6. ^ Weisbrot M, Rosnick D, Tucker T (20 September 2004). Black Swans, Conspiracy Theories, and the Quixotic Search for Fraud: A Look at Hausmann and Rigobón's Analysis of Venezuela's Referendum Vote Archived 24 July 2014 at the Wayback Machine. CEPR: Center for Economic and Policy Research. Retrieved 7 July 2012.
  7. ^ Carter Center, 17 September 2004, Report on an Analysis of the Representativeness of the Second Audit Sample, and the Correlation between Petition Signers and the Yes Vote in the 15 August 2004 Presidential Recall Referendum in Venezuela. Retrieved 20 February 2010
  8. ^ Cordero, Maria M. Febres; Márquez, Bernardo (2006). "A Statistical Approach to Assess Referendum Results: The Venezuelan Recall Referendum 2004". International Statistical Review. 74 (3): 379–389. doi:10.1111/j.1751-5823.2006.tb00301.x. S2CID 10856599.
  9. ^ Special Section: Revisiting the 2004 Venezuelan Referendum Archived 28 July 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Statistical Science, 26(4), November 2011