Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that Venezuela’s electoral infrastructure was designed to rig elections and so must be quickly replaced before a valid election can be held, Reuters reported. He spoke to reporters by phone a day after opposition leader Maria Corina Machado returned to Venezuela for the first time since the United States captured then President Nicolas Maduro in January and took him to New York for trial.
The order of operations is the substance. A senior State Department official said earlier that talks underway between the interim government in Caracas and opposition politicians are expected to produce a new supreme judicial tribunal by the end of this year and a new electoral council shortly thereafter. The fuller briefing account adds a third step: interim President Delcy Rodriguez formally declaring the presidency permanently vacant, which would constitutionally start a six month period to hold elections, pointing to a vote in the latter half of 2027. The official said the electoral council’s power runs well beyond administering ballots, because it also decides which parties can register and who can run, which is how Machado was disqualified in 2024.
Rubio stopped short of a target date. Machado has said elections should be held by mid 2027, while President Trump has previously said he did not believe Venezuela was ready for a nationwide vote. “I think we’re making real progress in that regard,” Rubio said. “But if anybody tries to derail that process, they’re doing a great harm to Venezuela.”
The sequencing argument is Washington’s answer to 2024, when a negotiated process delivered sanctions relief and prisoner releases but the election still ran through the unchanged tribunal and electoral council. Whether Caracas accepts the sequence, and whether Machado’s return strengthens or strains it, are the open questions. Nothing has been enacted: no justice has been replaced, no council reformed, and no vacancy declared.