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2024 was an election year for the entire world. However, elections were not synonymous with democracy. According to the Freedom in the World 2025 report, global freedom declined for the nineteenth consecutive year last year. One reason is that in more than 40% of countries and territories that held national elections, candidates were targeted by assassination attempts or attacks, polling stations were attacked, or post-election protests were suppressed with disproportionate force. Venezuela fell into this category.
“In authoritarian countries, elections were manipulated to prevent the participation of genuine opposition candidates,” the report notes.
Freedom House highlights violence as a key factor in elections.
“Violence became a major issue during the global election year, affecting 27 of the 66 countries and territories that held national elections in 2024. The most common form of electoral violence was attacks on candidates, which occurred in 20 countries.”
What the report says about Venezuela
Freedom House has been closely monitoring the situation in Venezuela. Last year’s report predicted what might happen in the presidential elections, and it was largely correct in its assessment.
At that time, the Freedom in the World 2024 report explained that Maduro’s government wanted to control the results and remain in power by changing the rules of the game and undermining its opponents.
In fact, in the 2024 report, the organization described four ways in which an authoritarian government like Maduro’s could manipulate the elections: controlling who appears on the ballot, changing the electoral rules, using state resources to tilt the playing field in favor of the ruling party, and as a last resort, attempting to change the results.
The 2025 report states that attempts to ban opposition candidates from participating did not always go as the autocrats had planned.
“In Venezuela, where freedoms have declined precipitously over the past 12 years under Nicolás Maduro’s rule, authorities disqualified the country’s most popular opposition leader, María Corina Machado, from the July presidential election and threatened to prosecute those who participated in an opposition primary. After the disqualification, Machado encouraged her supporters to rally around another, lesser-known opposition candidate: Edmundo González Urrutia.”
However, the Freedom in the World 2025 report also notes that on election night, the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner without publishing any evidence to support it.
“Unable to crush the opposition before and during the elections, the regime used armed gangs and security forces to identify, intimidate, and arbitrarily detain thousands of citizens who rejected the official results.”
This whole scenario is unfolding against a grim backdrop in Venezuela.
“Venezuelans face physical insecurity and violence from various sources, including irregular armed groups, security forces, and organized gangs. Venezuelan prisons are also among the worst in the region, and dozens of prisoners have died in recent years due to malnutrition and disease,” the report notes.
Freedom of expression compromised
Of the civil liberties analyzed by Freedom in the World, freedom of expression is the one that has declined the most in the last 19 years. The number of countries and territories where the press freedom indicator has a score of 0 out of 4 is growing.
“Attacks on journalists and the media have tripled between 2005 and 2024. Last year, attacks on the media in the form of censorship, arrests and imprisonment of journalists, physical and legal harassment, or violence were recorded in more than 120 countries and territories.”
In Venezuela, the situation is complex. In the Freedom on the Net 2024 report, the organization noted that Internet freedom remains highly restricted under the government of President Nicolás Maduro.
“Exacerbated by the country’s social, economic, and political crisis, Venezuelans often have difficulty accessing the Internet and obtaining reliable information due to pro-government disinformation and blockades of independent media.”
But it is not only media outlets and social networks such as Signal and X that are blocked and threatened; “people also face legal reprisals and other forms of harassment for expressing their opinions on politically sensitive issues in the digital space,” according to Freedom House.
In addition, the state manipulates online debate through influence operations and online platforms for government services, which also raise privacy concerns due to their large-scale collection of personal data.
ProBox issued alerts during and after the elections
Freedom House has repeatedly used ProBox research to identify what is happening in Venezuela in terms of fundamental freedoms and digital rights.
“The ProBox Digital Observatory documented several coordinated narratives against Venezuelan civil society actors that aimed to discredit them and their work,” the report notes. The case of Rocío San Miguel is just one example of this.
“Pro-government accounts made at least 1,000 posts using the hashtag #RocíoNoEsSanta to spread the notion that Rocío San Miguel, an activist whose whereabouts were unknown for several days after she was arrested, was a ‘traitor to the country.’”
ProBox also closely followed the entire presidential election process, the manipulation of polls, and the terror on social media that Chavismo attempted to promote after the post-election protests. It also covered the disinformation campaigns against María Corina Machado, both before and after the elections.
The bottom of the class
The greatest decline in civil liberties over the past 10 years has been recorded in Nicaragua, with a drop of 40 points in the index. El Salvador is also on the list, in third place, with a drop of 28 points, followed by Venezuela in ninth place with a drop of 22 points.
Freedom in the World 2025 assesses the state of freedom in 195 countries and 15 territories during the 2024 calendar year. Each country and territory is assigned between 0 and 4 points on a series of 25 indicators, for an aggregate score of up to 100. The indicators are grouped into the categories of political rights (0 to 40) and civil liberties (0 to 60), whose totals are weighted equally to determine whether the country or territory has an overall status of Free, Partly Free, or Not Free.
Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti are the countries without freedom in the region, and after the elections and arrests of thousands of citizens in Venezuela for protesting the election results, the outlook is not improving. Despite the fact that Venezuelans demonstrated, according to Freedom House, determination in trying to reverse Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian misrule through democratic means, electoral manipulation was the route taken by Chavismo to remain in power.
For more information on electoral manipulation by authoritarian regimes, follow us on social media at @ProBoxVE.
