A half-dozen masked assailants ransacked the Caracas headquarters of Venezuela's opposition Friday in an escalation of violence against President Nicolás Maduro's challengers after several countries called for proof of his claim he had won the disputed presidential election. Assailants broke down doors and hauled away valuable documents and equipment in the raid around 3am, opposition leader María Corina Machado's party said. Several walls were covered in black spray paint, the AP reports. The raid follows threats by top officials, including Maduro, to arrest Machado, who has gone into hiding while still urging Venezuelans and the international community to challenge Sunday's election results.
The Biden administration has thrown its support behind the opposition, recognizing Edmundo González as the victor and discrediting the National Electoral Council's official results. González was tapped in April as a last-minute stand-in for Machado, who was barred from running for office. The US announcement followed calls from multiple governments, including Maduro's close regional allies, for Venezuela's electoral authorities to release precinct-level vote counts, as it has done during previous elections. The electoral body declared Maduro the winner Monday, but the main opposition coalition revealed hours later that it had collected copies of more than 80% of the country's 30,000 voting tallies—printouts from the electronic voting machines—and that they show González prevailed by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
González, whose location also is unknown, posted a message Friday on X thanking the US "for recognizing the will of the Venezuelan people." On Friday, Venezuelan electoral authorities gave an updated vote count but not the precinct-level tallies demanded, per the AP. National Electoral Council President Elvis Amoroso said that with 96.9% of tally sheets counted, Maduro's margin of victory was more than 8 percentage points over González: 52% to 43.2%. He attributed the delay in updating results to attacks on the "technological infrastructure." On Friday, Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of Russia's parliament, emphasized that Russian election monitors have witnessed Maduro's legitimate victory. He accused the US of fomenting tensions in the country.
(More
Venezuela elections stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
