Examples

I don't normally write in English here but I thought that this was something worth translating, in case anyone -who doesn't understand Spanish- wants to know what all the fuzz is about with regards to the Venezuelan electoral audit.

Spanish version here

I am still puzzled with the continuous circus put up by Venezuela’s electoral body (CNE). Given that they are currently doing the electoral “audit” they are doing daily press notes on how they have fund 0% error. I understand that many people – especially in the government side- this this activity shows:

1)     The transparency of the electoral authority

2)     The trustworthiness of our electoral process

3)     The accuracy of the electoral results

As I tried to explain yesterday, in this post in Spanish, I still do not believe that this audit that is taking place allows any of those previous three points to be proven. So I have decided to make an attempt at explaining this using an example that takes the electoral context out, and so to avoid the perils of polarization clouding our judgments.

Example: The fire

There is a disco where there was a fire. Rumors say that the fire happened because there were more people than capacity allowed in the place.

The owner of the place says that the rumor is not true. He sold only 2,000 tickets, and only 1,890 people showed up. He also says that if the authorities want they can check that because he still has the tickets stored and they can count them.

The firefighters know there was a security camera in every door and say that besides counting the tickets they want to see the security footage.

The owner says no. He argues that showing the videos would violate the privacy of the people that went in.

Finally the owner counts the tickets in front of the press and tells them “You see only 1,890 people went in… just like I said”.

By the way, a similar situation happened in reality (Accidente en Madrid Arena en 2012).