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. The Carter Center, the electoral observers and other analysts denied fraud, saying the referendum was performed in a free and fair manner. 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. Later statistical re-evaluations published in 2006 and 2011 have argued that fraud was committed, but this is contested by organizations that actually observed the election, such as the Carter Center.
Petition
The recall mechanism was introduced into Venezuelan law in 1999 under the new Constitution drafted by the National Constituent Assembly and sanctioned by the electorate in a referendum. Under its provisions, an elected official can be subjected to a recall referendum if a petition gathers signatures from 20% of the corresponding electorate. Thus, to order a presidential recall vote in 2004, 2.4 million signatures were needed, or 20% of the national electorate.
Constitutional basis
The recall referendum is provided for in two articles of the 1999 Constitution:
Protests
In February 2003, the National Electoral Council announced that the signatures presented to request the recall referendum had to be examined a second time. Protests against the decision began on 27 February 2004 in Caracas and fifteen other cities of the country, lasting five consecutive days. Negotiations between the opposition and government agreeing on signatures led to the end of the protests. During the protests, nine people were killed, of which at least four were due to the response of security officials, hundreds were injured and 300 were arrested.
Signature collection drive
In August 2003, about 3.2 million signatures were presented by Súmate, a Venezuelan volunteer civil association, founded in 2002. These signatures were rejected by the National Electoral Council (CNE) on the grounds that they had been collected prematurely; i.e., before the midpoint of the presidential term. In September 2003, that the government used a "rapid reaction" squad to raid the offices of CNE, the government body overseeing the petition drive, where the petitions were stored.
In November 2003, the opposition collected a new set of signatures, with 3.6 million names produced in four days. The CNE rejected the petition, saying that only 1.9 million were valid, while 1.1 million were dubious and 460,000 completely invalid. Reaction to the decision to reject the petition (for the second time) resulted in riots that led to nine dead, 339 arrested, and 1,200 injured. The petitioners appealed to the Electoral Chamber of the Venezuelan Supreme Court. The court reinstated over 800,000 of the disputed signatures, bringing the total to 2.7 million, above the 2.4 million needed to authorise the referendum. However, about a week later, the Constitutional chamber of the Supreme Court overturned the Electoral chamber's ruling alleging that the latter did not have jurisdiction for that ruling.
The list of signatories was subsequently collected by the government. The names of petition signers were posted publicly online in what became known as the Tascón List. The president of the Venezuelan Workers Confederation was quoted by the Associated Press as claiming that the Chávez government had begun dismissing petition signers from government ministries, the state oil company, the state water company, the Caracas Metro, and public hospitals and municipal governments controlled by Chávez's party. The Associated Press also quoted Venezuela's Health Minister as justifying petition related layoffs by saying "all those who have signed to activate the recall referendum against President Chávez should be fired from the Health Ministry". He retracted these remarks several days later by saying that they were his own personal opinions and not a matter of public policy. The CNE later admitted that 15,863 signatures of those signatures that were verified in May 2004 belonged to people who had died in 2003.
Timing
The date chosen for the recall referendum was significant: had the recall vote been held on 19 August or later, Chávez would have been into the fifth year of his six-year term and had he been voted out, Vice President José Vicente Rangel would have taken over and served out the rest of Chávez's presidency (in accordance with Article 233 of the Constitution, above). With the vote called for 15 August, Chávez was not yet into the last two years of his term in office; an unfavourable result would therefore have meant the calling of fresh presidential elections within the following 30 days. Chávez had expressed his clear intention to stand in the election, had he been recalled; the opposition factions, however, maintained that he would have been disqualified from doing so.
Campaign
Between late May 2004, when the CNE set the referendum date, and 15 August, the date chosen, a contentious campaign took place, with both sides convinced of victory.
Opinion polls
Although support for Chávez had been low in 2003 and early 2004, polling data showed a shift as the campaign got under way. Most polls, including those by firms linked to the opposition which had shown low support for Chávez in 2003 and early 2004, predicted a rejection of the recall in the weeks before the referendum. Pre-referendum polls, both by opposition and by pro-Chávez groups, during the previous months and weeks predicted the No vote to win by a margin of between 5% and 31%. For example, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQR) Inc. and DATOS, both commissioned by the opposition, found margins in favour of No by 5% and 12% respectively in June 2004; Datanálisis found a margin of 14% in favour of Chávez in June. On 11 August, Robert Jensen wrote that recent polls ranged from 8% to 31% for margins in favour of the No vote.
Ballot
The following question was put to the Venezuelan electorate:
Translated into English:
For the recall to be successful, there were three conditions:
- A turnout of at least 25% of the country's 14.25 million registered voters.
- More votes against Chávez than the number who voted for him in the 2000 presidential election (3.76 million).
- More "yes" votes cast than "no" votes.
Referendum day
Polling stations opened at 6 am Venezuelan time on 15 August 2004. Later in the day, faced with a 70% turnout, lengthy queues of waiting voters, and delays exacerbated by the use of novel electronic voting equipment and fingerprint scanners, the electoral authorities agreed to extend the close of voting twice: a four-hour extension of the deadline that took it to 8 p.m., followed by an additional four hours announced later in the evening, which took it to midnight. A record number of voters turned out to defeat the recall attempt with a 59% "no" vote. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, who was in Venezuela to observe the electoral process, said of the patiently waiting Venezuelan electors, "This is the largest turnout I have ever seen." In previous presidential elections, turnout figures were at an average 55%. All Venezuelans aged 18 and up whose names appear on the electoral roll were eligible to vote, including those residing abroad: polling stations were set up in Venezuelan embassies and consulates abroad.
Parody recording
At 3:50pm local time on 15 August, CNE rector Jorge Rodríguez and CNE president Francisco Carrasquero announced on national television that they had found an audio CD where an imitation voice of Carrasquero declared that the opposition had won the referendum with a total of 11,436,086 "yes" votes, and that Chávez's mandate was thereby revoked. Since this was several hours before the closing of the polling booths, and since Carrasquero declared the recording to be fake, this appeared to be a case of attempted sabotage of the referendum. The attorney-general was called on to conduct a full inquiry into the incident and to locate and arrest those responsible for the spurious audio recording. Journalist Fausto Malavé declared in an interview in RCR that the recording was an evident parody that had been circulating in city streets for at least two months, claiming that it was surprising that it was only brought to public attention then. He also expressed concern at the significance that was attributed to it by the CNE.
Exit polling
Coordinadora Democrática commissioned an exit poll from the American firm of Penn, Schoen & Berland, which showed Chávez losing by a 60–40 margin. PSB used volunteers from Súmate, a NGO which was the primary organizer of the recall referendum, and involved around 200 polling places, out of 8,500. With over 20,000 responses the exit poll produced a much larger amount of data than most opinion polls (typically around 1,000 responses), leading to an extremely low sampling error; however, the Center for Economic and Policy Research suggested that since the chance of sample error in the exit poll was so low and observers did not find any signs of fraud, it may have been the survey's methodology that led to the discrepancy in results. PSB was criticized in the press for how the poll was carried out considering the Súmate group had been involved in organizing the recall and was considered anti-Chávez by the Venezuelan government. Publication or broadcast of exit polls was banned by electoral authorities, but results of the PSB poll went out to media outlets and opposition offices several hours before polls closed. Jimmy Carter said that Súmate "deliberately distributed this erroneous exit poll data in order to build up, not only the expectation of victory, but also to influence the people still standing in line".
Result
The preliminary result was announced on 16 August 2004 on national television and radio after 94% of the vote had been counted, with 58% having voted no and 42% voted yes.. According to these early-morning results, the first condition (a quorum of 25% of the electorate) had been satisfied. The second condition (more votes against Chávez than he received in 2000) would probably be satisfied; however, the third condition (a simple majority: more people voting "yes" than "no") had clearly failed. The final results showed 59% had voted no.
Disputes
Electoral fraud complaints
After the preliminary results were broadcast, the opposition Coordinadora Democrática declared that fraud had taken place, stating that its own data (the Penn, Schoen & Berland exit poll, which was performed by volunteers from Súmate, the NGO which had organized the referendum) put the "Yes" vote at 59% and the "No" vote at 40%. Their exit poll showed the opposite result to the official voting data, predicting that Chávez would lose by 20%, whereas the election results showed him to have won by 20%. A poll company representative, Schoen commented, "I think it was a massive fraud." Coordinadora Democrática also told the press that no opposition representation was present when the votes were counted and that the physical ballots had not yet been taken into account.