Venezuela's Supreme Court of Justice came to the National Electoral Council (CNE) building in Caracas to begin the process of validating physical ballots on Sunday (8/18), as the election dispute drags on.
Judges at the high court, accompanied by international experts and observers, visited the CNE to begin the process of validating transcribed ballot count samples with those in the CNE's National Vote Counting Center database, the high court said in a media statement.
Authorities were accompanied into the management area of the Vote Counting Center, where, with the support of technical specialists from the CNE, they began validating that the physical ballots matched the digital data and verifying that the results were correct, images from Venezuelan state television showed.
The process comes a day after Venezuela's political opposition and its supporters gathered in cities across the country, demanding recognition of what they called their candidate's resounding victory in the presidential election nearly three weeks ago.
The country's electoral authorities have declared that President Nicolas Maduro won a third term in the July 28 election, with just under 52 percent of the vote.
The High Court, seen by the opposition as an arm of the ruling party, said it was still verifying the election results, but the opposition has failed to provide evidence of its own tally. (ns/lt)
