That may not be the case. To my knowledge, there were no independent election monitors. Several Latin American countries are beholden to Chavez, and while they were interested observers of the election results, none sent personnel to monitor the legitimacy of the election process.

At their campaign headquarters, Chavez opponents hugged one another, and some cried. They said the results were skewed by Chavez’s broad use of state resources to get out the vote, through a battery of state-run news media, pressure on 2 million public employees and frequent presidential speeches which all television stations were required to air.

With the courts, the legislature and the election council all under his influence, and now with no limits on his re-election, officials say Chavez is virtually unstoppable.

President Obama monitored the election results from afar, and the US State Department punted.

The United States Tuesday welcomed Venezuela’s “civic” referendum lifting term limits for the president and all politicians, but urged support for democracy and tolerance in the country.

“We congratulate the civic and participatory spirit of the millions of Venezuelans who exercized their democratic right to vote,” State Department spokesman Noel Clay told AFP.

(snip…)

Clay said that after the vote, “it is important that elected officials now focus on governing democratically and addressing the issues of concern to the Venezuelan people.”

“We encourage all sectors of Venezuelan society to respect the diversity of use (of the vote) that is the strength of a pluralistic democracy,” he added.

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With the majority of Venezuelans living in abject, Dickensian poverty, it doesn’t take much to bribe their votes. Vote buying in Venezuela by Chavez’s cronies is common practice, usually coming in the form of free food, heating oil, or even rum. Considering that a large portion of the country lives on less money than the average rural Chinese person, their support can be more or less bought on the cheap.

And, if Chavez thought the vote was ever close, he knows he can always send out the military thugs, round people up into the polls by force, tamper with ballot machines, whatever (some of these things were rumored to have happened this time, even)… and he can rest assured knowing that Jimmy Carter will stand by and laud the openness and validity of the electoral process.