[ July 18, 2026 ]
A newly declassified CIA report reveals that Venezuelan officials likely possessed the means to manipulate electronic elections using Smartmatic technology. Intelligence sources alleged that Hugo Chávez’s government coordinated with election authorities and Smartmatic before Venezuela’s 2012 election, deploying altered machines to secure victory by roughly 1.5 million votes—nearly matching Chávez’s official margin. Although the CIA ultimately concluded that large-scale fraud was unproven, its own “devil’s advocate” analysis found that such manipulation could have occurred undetected. The report also cites alleged ties between Smartmatic directors and Venezuelan intelligence, as well as Chávez’s stated desire to influence U.S. politics—details that cast new light on election-security concerns previously dismissed as conspiracy theories.
CIA Report: Venezuela ‘Could Have’ Used Voting Machines To Rig Elections
By: Brianna Lyman, The Federalist, July 17, 2026:
ADVERTISEMENTA newly declassified CIA report says the Venezuelan government “could have” used voting machines to rig elections. President Donald Trump declassified a series of documents and reports related to election integrity on July 16, including a “CIA Note” entitled, “Summary of Select Intelligence Reporting From 2004-2020 on Venezuela’s Electronic Voting Manipulation Capabilities.”
The note says that between 2004 and 2020, “intelligence established that Venezuelan government officials developed sustained interest and likely some capability in manipulating electronic voting systems, including Smartmatic technology, to influence electoral outcomes in Venezuela.” The document says it was produced under the auspices of the CIA’s deputy director of analysis and is dated June 29, 2026.
The CIA produced a baseline assessment of Venezuela’s 2012 presidential election that maintained mass electronic election fraud had not occurred. A 2013 CIA “devil’s advocate” analysis, the note says, provided “plausible scenarios” in which “large-scale electronic manipulation could have occurred in Venezuela’s 2012 election without detection.”
The note summarizes sources reporting that, prior to the 2012 Venezuelan presidential election, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s “intelligence services … worked with the National Electoral Council and Smartmatic to develop plans to manipulate election results using preprogrammed voting machines.” The source or sources of that reporting, however, are censored in the document released Thursday.
The note includes claims that such plans included sending “altered machines” to roughly 300 voting centers in pro-Chavez areas “to ensure victory by approximately 1.5 million votes.” Chavez won that election by roughly 1.6 million votes, according to the note.
ADVERTISEMENT“[S]ources reported that Chavez congratulated his team for successfully implementing the manipulation plan,” the report continues. The “devil’s advocate” analysis found that elections in countries that “are clients of the technology provider could be in doubt.” But the CIA assessed that such manipulation did not occur in the 2012 Venezuelan election, because the opposition party conceded loss, the CIA didn’t confirm these possibilities were acted upon, and pre-election polls showed Chavez in the lead.
The note says U.S. intelligence reports indicated in April 2004 that Chavez “stated his objective was to prevent the reelection of a sitting US president, suggesting intent to influence US domestic politics.” The report also notes “intelligence that Smartmatic directors held credentials from Venezuela intelligence services.”
Following the 2020 election, Trump election lawyer Sidney Powell posted screenshots of an affidavit on X that alleged “Chavez was most insistent that Smartmatic design the system in a way that the system could change the vote of each voter without being detected.” The New York Times did a lengthy report on this post, along with a few others, to dismiss the claims as conspiratorial.
After the 2020 election, Smartmatic sued both Fox News and Newsmax, alleging defamation after both had commentators appear on the network who expressed concerns that the systems were vulnerable to interference and fraud. Newsmax settled with Smartmatic for $40 million, according to NBC.
A federal grand jury indicted Smartmatic executives in 2024 for allegedly participating in a “bribery and money laundering scheme.” Nearly a year later, Smartmatic was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami for allegedly bribing a Philippine official in relation to the 2016 Philippine national elections.
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