Electoral authorities declared President Nicolas Maduro won the Venezuelan presidential election amid vast indications of fraud and pushback from the opposition and the international community, which will fuel political volatility, U.S. sanctions and risks of unrest in the coming months. Maduro won his third term with 51.2% of the vote while main opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia received 44.2%, according to Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE, in Spanish), which Maduro's government controls. Opposition leaders denounced that their representatives had not been allowed to monitor the vote count in multiple sites, and declared Gonzalez the winner. The election took place amid multiple indicators of widespread fraud, with armed paramilitary groups (known as ''colectivos'') harassing opposition supporters, voting centers remaining open for longer than they were supposed to, and multiple blackouts, which interfered with electronic ballots, while the CNE's website remained offline for several hours. Prominent opposition leader Maria Corina Machado stated...
