It had already been clear for months that Venezuela’s presidential election on Sunday, would not be free or fair, as the government jailed opposition leaders or disqualified them from running for office.

But as the day progressed it became all the more evident just how flawed the country’s democratic process had become and why the victory claim by the country’s autocratic leader, President Nicolás Maduro, has provoked such fury.

Voter intimidation

Across the country citizens, local reporters and journalists for The New York Times observed instances of voter intimidation.

In the early morning about 15 men in unmarked black jackets temporarily blocked access to one voting center in the capital, Caracas, a Times journalist observed. One volunteer vote monitor was punched.

The crowd eventually started demanding the right to vote and the long line started moving inside, more than an hour and a half after voting was officially supposed to start.