April 6, 2005
Carter Centre: fraud reports are worthless

(Panorama Digital) - " In response to the accusations involving statistic evidence of electoral fraud during the referendum, the Carter Centre assigned a commission of experts to investigate the foundations of the study made by Venezuelan professors Ricardo Hausmann and Roberto Rigobon.

The results of the investigation called 'Conclusions of an Independent Commission about Allegations of Statistic Evidence of Fraud during the Presidential Referendum' are published on the website of the organization.

The independent commission concluded that Mr. Hausmann 's and Rigobo's study had methodological defects. In particular, the statistical results used in the first part of the study did not indicate what the type of fraud was.

At the same time, when the independent commission tried to replicate the results of the second part of the study with different data, including those provided by Sumate, they could not replicate the results given by Hausmann and Rigobon.

They also noticed that the sample taken from voting centres and examined by electoral observers, was a representative one.

The commission concluded, based on these results, that Hausmann and Rigobo's study does not provide evidence of fraud during the referendum.

The commission members included Henry Brady, Director of the Faculty of Poll Investigation Centre of Berkeley University; Richard Fowles, associate professor of Economy at the University of Utah; Aviel Rubin, professor of Computer Science and Technical Director of the Information Security Institute of Johns Hopkins University and Jonathan Taylor, professor of the Statistics Department at Stanford University".