By Vivian Sequera
CARACAS, Oct 23 (Reuters) – The Venezuelan opposition movement headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado is preparing for eventual elections, including a new effort to boost voter registration, according to documents and sources with knowledge of the matter.
Machado’s Vente Venezuela movement plans to debut an app on Saturday to collect voter registration information from Venezuelans abroad, according to two sources and a document seen by Reuters. The group hopes eventually to share data from the app, which was built by 15 staff over the last 18 months, with a reformed electoral council so users can be officially added to voter rolls.
No date for an election has been set, though Machado has said it should take place by July 2027. She has lived outside the country for nearly a year and not announced a date for her return, despite frenzied speculation that her arrival may be imminent.
A vote may not happen for a year or more, until after courts and electoral authorities are reformed to ensure fair conditions for elections, has Reuters reported. Interim President Delcy Rodriguez has promised a transition to “full democracy” and is holding US-supported talks — which do not include Machado — with one faction of the opposition.
It is not yet clear from the negotiations who would head up a reformed electoral council or what changes would be made to the body, which has been staffed by ruling party loyalists for years.
Rodriguez gained power in January after the Trump administration arrested her predecessor, President Nicolas Maduro, who is in New York awaiting trial on drug trafficking and torture charges.
The opposition says Machado’s proxy, Edmundo Gonzalez, decisively won the 2024 presidential election, though authorities backed Maduro’s claim to victory.
In that election, most Venezuelans living abroad were unable to vote because of bureaucratic obstacles to registration and other issues.
The country of about 28.7 million people saw mass emigration in the decade before that election due to economic collapse and political instability. Analysts said many Venezuelans abroad would likely have voted against Maduro, making them attractive to the opposition.
FOCUS ON VENEZUELANS WHO GREW UP ABROAD
The Vente Venezuela app could help some 4 million Venezuelans abroad register to vote, a source who was not authorized to speak publicly ahead of its release said. There is a special focus on young Venezuelans who grew up abroad, numbering among a diaspora of some 8 million people.
Vente hosted nationwide demonstrations on Thursday, the largest in nearly two years, where marchers demanded an election date and some expressed frustration at what they see as slow change.
“I came to ask for Maria Corina Machado to return because I don’t believe in anyone else, or in anything this government is doing,” said pensioner Senovia Urdaneta, 60, who sells soft drinks out of her home in the oil-industry city of Maracaibo.
“I’m an old woman whose life gets a little shorter every day because of the blackouts, the hunger and the hopelessness I live with,” she said.
Others had faith in changes directed by Washington.
Since the US military captured Maduro in January, President Donald Trump and his administration have said the US is “in charge” of Venezuela and supervising its transition. In August, Trump announced a deal giving the US majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves.
“I want Maria Corina to come back, but it’s all part of a strategy. The United States is dismantling the regime from the ground up,” said Omar Brito, 53, from the small city of Charallave outside Caracas.
Brito, who said he supported the ruling party until 2013, gets by selling bread and through remittances sent by family members abroad. “I’d rather be the 51st state than remain subjected to this regime,” he said.
(Reporting by Vivian Sequera in Caracas; additional reporting by Mariela Nava in Maracaibo; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
