CEPR and their work on it confirmed by the Carter Center. But, I guess, adding "Hugo Chavez" to anything ups your hits?
Study Finds Economists' Allegations of Fraud in Venezuelan Referendum to Be Groundless
Results Concur With Carter Center's (September 17) Review of Audit Procedures
For Immediate Release: September 20, 2004
Contact: Debi Kar, 202- 387-5080
On September 3, economists Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and Roberto Rigobon of the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, presented econometric results that the authors maintain are evidence of fraud in Venezuela's August 15 recall referendum. The paper was reported by four major international news outlets and was used to raise doubts about the validity of the referendum among U.S. legislators and policy-makers. It was also used to support claims of fraud by opposition leaders in Venezuela.
A new paper by the Center for Economic and Policy Research examines the results presented by Hausmann and Rigobon and finds that they provide no evidence of fraud. This concurs with the findings of the Carter Center (September 17), showing that the sample selected on August 18 for an audit of the vote that they observed, was indeed a random sample of all voting centers, and that electronic fraud of the type suggested by Hausmann and Rigobon was therefore impossible.
A copy of the full report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, "Black Swans, Conspiracy Theories, and the Quixotic Search for Fraud: A Look at Hausmann and Rigobon's Analysis of Venezuela's Referendum Vote", written by Mark Weisbrot, David Rosnick and Todd Tucker, can be obtained here.
snip
The chances of getting an audited sample, under Hausmann and Rigobon's assumptions of how it was selected, of 41.6 percent YES, if the true (non-fraudulent) vote were 59 percent YES, are less than one in 28 billion trillion. Even if the true vote had the recall barely succeeding with only 50.1 percent YES, the chances of getting an audited sample of 41.6 percent YES are less than one in a million.
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/press-releases/press-releases/-study-finds-economists-allegations-of-fraud-in-venezuelan-referendum-to-be-groundless/