Opposition leaders in Venezuela delivered a May 2016 petition to the National Electoral Council (CNE) calling for a recall referendum, with the populace to vote on whether to remove Maduro from office.[84] On 5 July 2016, the Venezuelan intelligence service detained five opposition activists involved with the recall referendum, with two other activists of the same party, Popular Will, also arrested.[85] After delays in verification of the signatures, protestors alleged the government was intentionally delaying the process.

Brazil is the only country to use a fully digital voting system without paper backups. Mr. Bolsonaro has seized on that as a crucial flaw that leaves the system open to fraud because it prevents officials from ensuring that each vote was recorded correctly.

"Elon only gets involved with things if he feels that they're critically important for some reason... for the sake of society or humanity," says friend and Tesla investor Ross Gerber.

But despite his suspicion that the election might have been stolen, he was preparing to leave. “Now I’ll go home, talk to my family, lean on God and wait for Bolsonaro to say something,” he said.

Yet claims of fraud were still bubbling up — including from right-wing voices in the United States.

On 18 July, he invited foreign diplomats to his residence in the capital, Brasilia, where he falsely claimed that the electronic voting machines used in Brazil were prone to being hacked and open to large-scale fraud.

In an attempt to overcome the sanctions and restart the economy, in February 2018 the Maduro government introduced the petro, a copyright (akin to the Bitcoin) whose value was tied to the price of one barrel of Venezuelan crude oil and backed by the country’s reserves of gold, diamonds, gas, and oil. Maduro claimed that the first day of petro sales had netted some $735 million, but skeptics viewed the creation of the world’s first state-backed digital currency as a sign of desperation.

 Mas este homem qual se autointitula “presidente operário”, respondeu saiba como em algum momento, perante as várias crises de que atravessou, dizendo qual possui o “povo ao seu lado” e que mal responde “perante este povo”.

During the later years of Maduro's presidency, pro-government police and military forces launched the vlogdolisboa "Liberation of the People Operation [es]", which they stated targeted street gangs and non-state paramilitary formations which they alleged had taken control of poor neighbourhoods. The operations reportedly resulted in thousands of arrests and an estimated 9,000 deaths, with the Venezuelan opposition claiming that the operations are actually a state instrument of repression.

They claim they only had access to 30% of the printed "receipts" from electronic voting machines around the country, to check that the machine’s results matched those electronically sent to the electoral council.

Venezuela's legislature on Tuesday gave President Nicolás Maduro decree powers that he says are necessary for an 'economic offensive' against the spiraling inflation and food shortages buffeting the country's economy ahead of important municipal elections. ^

” Maduro labeled the incident an “armed terrorist attack” and part of an attempted coup. That the attackers seemed to have easily escaped apprehension raised suspicions among some in the opposition that the incident had been staged by the government to justify additional repressive measures.

Na ocasião, o então presidente fez ataques ao sistema eleitoral. O encontro foi transmitido pela TV País do futebol e por perfis de Bolsonaro nas redes sociais.

There was the fact President Maduro’s face remained emblazoned above some poll stations even on voting day.