Voting around Caracas on Sunday. These photos were taken by a pool of 38 citizen journalists who documented the electoral process. Their fascinating slideshow can be found at this Flickr site, here. Hat tip: Venezuela Today

Venezuelans went to the polls today to decide who their new president would be. The polls are closed, except that the army is said to be re-opening some by force, to bus in Chavista voters from the hillside slums. One exit poll, from a government-linked polling firms, the San Francisco Bay Area leftist one called Evans-McDonough, is dutifully leaking out, saying Chavez easily leads, 58%-40%. Release of those polls is illegal, and Reuters makes the absurd claim that it’s only repeating them as gospel for publication outside Venezuela. Guess what, Reuters, I got news for you: The Internet is entirely accessible from Venezuela. When you publish this, you are knowingly publishing inside Venezuela in an effort to slant the story the Chavista way. Don’t worry, though: You’ll never be prosecuted for doing the critical spin-control that Chavez wants.

Exit polls from insiders – I just talked to one who’s not connected with anyone else I know – say that Rosales is significantly ahead in the election, by about 10 percentage points and is likely to wrap up the race between 2 and 4 percentage points ahead. There are long faces on the expressions of the military, for what it is worth. What the real result will be, and more important, how Chavez will announce it, will determine the outcome of this race. That said, the exit polls do suggest good news. Could Venezuela really be nearing the end of an era? It’s like a mirage in the desert. But I hope it’s reality.

Turnout, according to Miguel, is thin in some areas of Caracas, where the fingerprint machine use is heavy. Caracas I believe is the only part of Venezuela where the machines are in use, and it’s also an anti-Chavista stronghold. These fingerprint machines, made by Cogent, based in Pasadena, are basically units of delay and intimidation. They have been shown to match voters to their votes, and Venezuela’s voters already know that being found to not vote for Chavez is a recipe for government reprisals. But the rest of the country seems to have escaped use those odious fingerprint-recording machines, which turn every Venezuelan a suspect, for the government.

In the latest development, Chavez’s CNE electoral board has declared victory for Chavez, with 68% of the vote, 30% more than Chavez got in the recall referendum. I find this number extremely hard to believe. The exit polls from the opposition showed that Rosales was ahead by 2 million votes. This result shows something very very different. It’s very likely that this was a shameless flipping of the numbers. But in light of the intransparency of electronic voting, there is no way anyone will ever know. The only people left to say anything are the international electoral observers. Gullible ones like Jimmy Carter are likely to declare all free and fair with little study of the matter. With a mandate this strong and the international community behind them, Chavez will aggressively do anything he pleases with the opposition. We will now see boat people, GULags, reeducation camps and firing squads. Rosales has said nothing but is in a meeting with the military. It’s very tense times right now in Venezuela. Rosales is on television right now, and seems to be conceding, according to my source; he says Chavez won, but not by nearly as high a margin as he claims, hardly a satisfactory statement. Until elections are done transparently in Venezuela with real secret ballot, nothing is going to seem credible. Now Chavez is preparing to take dictatorship for life as Cuba’s dictator before him, assuming Castro’s mantle. Will he be able to hold onto it? That is what remains to be seen. Check out the Venezuelan bloggers listed below for the latest updates.

Here are some highlights, particularly in photos, from around the blogosphere:

El Universal has a great new layout and a beautiful photogallery showing the scenes from this election here.

Miguel at The Devil’s Excrement has photos of his voting station, and shows tons of long, seven-pronged lines he had to brave to get to the polls. He said the process was held up by the fingerprint machines. The voters chanted that the machines should be scrapped and the voting officials had no choice but to halt their usage. Read it all here.

Venezuela Today has found a good Flickr photo-album, put together by many Venezuelan citizen journos, it’s well worth a look for the flavor of the contest, at this link here.

Daniel at Venezuela News & Views says he got done with his voting in Yaracuy state, too – in the pouring rain. He says it went fairly smoothly. Alex Beech has some excellent commentary accompanying the experience. Read it all, here.

George at The Real Cuba has some interesting photos of how the vote went in Miami, as well as assorted reportage of what he is hearing from Caracas, too, in this interesting post, here.

Jim at GatewayPundit has a terrific slide show full of photographs of the election in action, too. DO NOT MISS his photo of the Hugo Chavez inflatable blow-up doll that is being prominently displayed in Caracas. Eeeeeuuwww!!!! See it here.

Alek at VCrisis has some very good stuff from inside Caracas, telling how the Chavistas have repressed Telemundo’s reporting and lots of other details that gives the flavor of how this is going. Read it here.

Martha Colmenares, at Sin Mordaza has a fabulous, beautiful essay in English about the need to speak out against injustice. It is awesomely eloquent and a must-read here.

I wrote up another item for American Thinker about the difficulty of knowing what would happen in Venezuela outside the premise of careful observation and verification. It can be read here.

Iris at Global Voices has a large group of links from yesterday and the day before but as I write this, nothing just yet. Keep an eye on this site, I bet she or David, is working on putting a new, and probably very good, entry on this election up right now.

Fausta at Fausta’s blog has more material and a podcast coming ahead of her interview with Daniel, in what should be must-reading as it arrives. UPDATE: It’s arrived – check it out at this link here.

Venezuelans in Caracas waited in long lines to vote
Source: EFE, via El Universal