In the lead-up to Sunday’s election, Venezuela’s dictatorial president, Nicolás Maduro, engaged in strategic and blatantly underhanded efforts to ensure that he remained in power while giving lip service to supporting a democratic electoral process.

The most obvious example of Maduro’s rigging the system was his move to ensure that his biggest threat, María Corina Machado, who won the opposition party primary by a whopping 90% last October, would be blocked from running. A pro-Maduro court proceeded to cook up a bogus election charge and banned Machado from the ballot.

The Biden administration, which has gone easy on Maduro by lifting sanctions against his regime in the hopes of getting the strongman to loosen his grip on power, was effectively played for fools. Secretary of State Antony Blinken offered a feckless protest but refused to agree that Maduro had reneged on his promise to hold free and fair elections.

Yet despite this significant setback, the Venezuelan opposition regrouped, taking full advantage of Maduro’s widespread unpopularity due in large part to a once wealthy nation now being crippled by poverty. The average person earns less than $200 a month. To put that in perspective, it costs the average family of four $385 a month for groceries.

With Machado out, the opposition coalesced around a political newcomer, Edmundo González, and polling had him holding a significant lead going into the election. On election day, exit polling had Gonzalez winning some 70% of the vote, with Machado telling reporters that González had received roughly 6.2 million votes to roughly 2.7 million for Maduro.

However, that all changed after Maduro’s National Electoral Council announced the official vote tallies, declaring he had won the election by 51% to Gonzalez’s 44%. Yet it was immediately clear to outside observers that Maduro had engaged in a massive election fraud operation.

Maduro’s electoral authorities failed to follow numerous laws intended to ensure a fair, free, and transparent electoral process. This has resulted in a number of massive protests across the country. As one protester put it, Maduro “has to go. One way or another.”

It’s obvious to every fair-minded person that Maduro — who characterized the protests as “an attempt … to impose a coup d'état in Venezuela again of a fascist and counterrevolutionary nature” — rigged the election.

While the world watches and condemns Maduro’s rigging of the election, it should serve as a warning to Americans of the danger to our electoral system if a commitment to election integrity is not established.

Furthermore, it is the height of hypocrisy to see mainstream media outlets report on the questionable election results from Venezuela, noting a number of election-related violations in order to make the assessment that the election was effectively stolen. And this despite the fact that the government of Venezuela has officially declared the results to be accurate. Yet when it comes to the U.S. presidential election results in 2020, any suggestion of fraud or voting irregularities will result in being labeled an election denier and/or a tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist.