There is no evidence that Venezuela’s electoral system was the target of a cyber attack during last month’s election, the head of the Carter Center’s observation mission told AFP, confirming data that showed the opposition candidate had won. They give

On election night, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) president, Elvis Amoroso, declared President Nicolás Maduro’s victory without providing data from polling stations, saying the CNE had suffered a computer attack.

“We have no evidence of that,” Jenny Lincoln, head of the Carter Center delegation invited to monitor the Venezuelan election, told AFP.

The CNE has not published detailed results of the vote and has claimed the delay was caused by a hack, while Maduro has denounced what he calls a “criminal cyber-fascist coup”.

“There are companies that monitor and know when there is a denial of service, that there was no denial of service in Venezuela on election day or election night,” Lincoln said, speaking from Atlanta, Georgia, where Center is located.

Voting data, meanwhile, is transferred “over telephone lines and satellite phones. So it doesn’t even happen with computers,” he said.

Opponents and many observers believe the delay is intended to help avoid the actual results showing that rival candidate Edmundo González Arrutia has won.

The CNE on Friday endorsed Maduro’s victory with 52% of the vote, still without making the polling station numbers public.

Meanwhile, the opposition has uploaded voting records to a website that claims González Arrutia won with 67 percent of the vote.

“Although the playing field was very uneven, the people of Venezuela went to vote,” Lincoln said.

“The major election day anomaly was the CNE’s lack of transparency and blatant disregard for their rules of the game in terms of generating genuine votes from the Venezuelan people,” he said.

The center “ran the same numbers” from the available data that the opposition used and – along with other organizations and universities – declared González the winner with more than 60 percent of the vote.

Maduro and Jorge Rodríguez, his close aide who is president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, have claimed the figures are false, with Rodríguez showing documents he says prove it.

“I think it was theater,” Lincoln said.

Several countries, including the United States and several Latin American countries, have recognized González Urrutia as the winner, and have called on Venezuela to publish election data.

Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, which have maintained good relations with Maduro’s government, called for “impartial verification” of the results.