Like a lot of you, I get my news from Venezuela by checking the media and interacting with friends down there.  To be honest, the power shortages have literally put many of Maduro's critics out of business.  How can you blog when the internet is down or the electricity is off?

My friend Daniel Duquenal, the editor of Venezuela News & Views, has done his best to get around the problems.

This is what he wrote about "the fraud" on Sunday: 

The electoral fraud. It was openly visible. International journalists reported on it even before the voting centers closed.

Pictures comparing centers of July 16th and yesterday were posted and the difference in attendance was obvious. 

Voting centers were empty to lightly attended, or outright closed. 

Only the one at the Poliedro had people that supposedly accounted from the all the "violence areas that did not allow people to vote". And yet, the attendance there looked like the normal one at a regular major voting center, not the one that was supposed to welcome dozens of voting centers. 

Well, it seemed like that if you have a scientific and critical mind which is something that the lumpen chavismo does not have. Otherwise they would not be chavistas.

The electoral fraud was concrete. I have told you the experience of my S.O. and that by itself is enough for me. Simply put, there was NO control. Simply put, people could vote wherever they wanted. Simply put people could vote as often as they wanted. Simply put there were no witnesses so voting table attendants could activate voting stations and fill up the boxes with as many ballots as they wanted.

The electoral fraud started from the start. I have listed already all the parameters that made this vote a fraud. You just need to add what I have written above.

The results themselves were deliberately proclaiming the fraud. The results were simply unbelievable. So unbelievable that one cannot fathom the need of the regime for such an atrocious lie...

The results are meaningless and aim only at the chavista lumpen and brain washed. Think of it this way. Maduro claims that 8 million people voted for his fraud in the middle of the major economic crisis that we have experienced in our history. No food, no jobs, no medicine, violence from crime skyrocketing, etc, etc…  And he gets almost as many votes as Chavez was getting ten years ago at his prime of massive flux of dollars and cash payment to "el pueblo".  Gimme a break! The other results that are meaningless are who won what. That is, when the injection of votes is so flagrant, so abusive that whoever won whatever seat somewhere it is because votes were allocated to that person according to the regime wishes. 

We will soon find out, I guess, what section of chavismo has come on top, not through votes but through counting the votes in the greatest Stalinist dictum. 

You know, the one where he says that elections do not depend on the votes but on who counts them. 

Daniel is exactly right.  This is an election that Stalin, Lenin, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chávez would love.  The objective of this so-called election was to crush the opposition, or anyone not lined up behind the regime.  By the way, two opposition leaders were arrested after the vote.

The bad news is that they did it.  The good news is that the U.S. has already announced sanctions.  The U.S. will freeze Maduro's assets and prevent U.S. citizens and companies from doing business with Venezuela. 

A total fraud in Venezuela is all you can say about what just happened!  Where is the U.N. when we really need it?

P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.