The Social Democrat challenger is the governor of Venezuela's oil-rich Zulia state. Mainstream opposition leaders chose him in August to be their unity candidate to take on the fiery Chavez at the polls. An opposition activist in Miami, Ernesto Ackerman, explains why the motto of the rally was "Dare to be vigilant"
"We already had one election that was stolen (from) us," he said. "I think this is the last chance that Venezuela becomes democratic again. And that is why we are vigilant, that this election should end up the right way, throwing out Chavez."
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-10-08-voa9.cfm
Activist Ernesto Ackerman says the opposition does not trust Mr. Chavez' voting machines, and would prefer that each vote be counted by hand.
"What Chavez doesn't accept is a manual counting," Ackerman said. We want to count the votes one by one, manually. We don't want his machines."
U.S. Census figures indicate that more than 40,000 Venezuelans live in South Florida, and a total of 18,000 Venezuelans across the United States are registered to vote in the December elections.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-10-08-voa9.cfm