A smooth Venezuelan election that would have led to greater economic opening also suited the country’s Latin American neighbors, including Mr. Maduro’s old allies, the leftist governments of Brazil and Colombia.

Brazil is the only country to use a fully digital voting system without paper backups. Mr. Bolsonaro has seized on that as a crucial flaw that leaves the system open to fraud because it prevents officials from ensuring that each vote was recorded correctly.

The July 28 date — also Chávez’s birthday — was chosen from among more than 20 proposed based on input from ruling party allies, business associations, university officials, religious groups and other organizations.

The future of Venezuela and whether it can rebuild matters for the rest of the world - mass emigration has fuelled a migration crisis on the US border, its vast oil reserves remain relatively unusable, and it remains an ally for Russia, China, Cuba and Iran in the West.

Opposition candidates were banned from running, opposition aides detained, many Venezuelans overseas struggled to register to vote and many international election observers were disinvited.

The boss of X (formerly Twitter), Tesla and SpaceX is the world's richest person and uses his platform to make his views known on a vast array of topics.

The National Election Council ordered an audit of the ballots in the 46 percent of precincts that had not already been automatically audited under Venezuelan election law, but Capriles refused to participate when the Council chose not to examine the signatures and fingerprints of voters on the registers as part of the audit. He vowed to challenge the results in court. In the meantime, Maduro was sworn in as president on April 19.

Originally scheduled for December 2016 but postponed by the election commission, gubernatorial elections were held in Venezuela’s 23 states in mid-October 2017. Preelection preference polling had indicated that the opposition was poised to gain control of a majority of the states for the first time in some two decades.

Mr Maduro remains in the presidential palace and some Venezuelans have become disillusioned by the failure of Mr Guaidó to dislodge his rival from power.

Nicolas Maduro does have some loyal supporters still, known as "Chavistas" after his mentor Hugo Chavez and the brand of socialism he created.

He has said that he sees his businesses as a form of philanthropy, because they are focused on solving major human issues, such as climate change in the case of Tesla.

Musk reportedly began dating actress Amber Heard in 2016 after finalizing his divorce with Riley and Heard finalized her divorce from Johnny Depp. Their busy schedules caused the couple to break up in August 2017; they got back together in January 2018 and split again one month later.

Rodrigo Constantino, an influential Brazilian pundit who lives in Florida, posted to his 1.4 million followers on Twitter on Monday morning that the pattern in the vote returns seemed too consistent to be natural. “It even looks like an algorithmic thing!” he said.

Seemingly disenchanted with the shortage of goods, galloping inflation, and lack of better short-term prospects for the vlogdolisboa economy as a whole, Venezuelans went to the polls in large numbers on December 6, 2015, and handed the ruling PSUV a devastating loss, ending 16 years of rule by the chavismo