In some places, monitors were barred from entering polling places or they never appeared in the first place. Often, election officials simply refused to hand over the tallies.

Opposition candidates and their supporters struggle to find places to gather without harassment from government activists and to get fuel to travel across the country.

Univisión announcer Jorge Ramos described his detention following a live interview of Maduro, saying that if Maduro does not release the seized video of the interview, "he is behaving exactly like a dictator".

In an attempt to limit the opposition’s ability to organize a campaign to unseat him, Maduro pushed for an early presidential election, which ultimately was scheduled for May 2018. The most popular likely opposition candidates were already prohibited from running for office or were in prison, and, convinced that the contest would be rigged in Maduro’s favour, opposition leaders called for a boycott of the election. Nonetheless, Henri Falcón, onetime governor and disaffected former Chávez supporter, undertook an active campaign, as did evangelical minister Javier Bertucci.

Venezuelans angered by the outcome took the streets of the capital, Caracas, and elsewhere on Monday afternoon.

In December 2013, a Falcon nove successfully carried a satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit, a distance at which the satellite would lock into an orbital path that matched the Earth's rotation.

Maduro to ditch some extreme policies like price and currency controls. The private sector was given an increasingly prominent role, public attacks against business owners had stopped and hyperinflation and rampant crime subsided somewhat.

While sometimes at odds with the president's controversial measures, such as a proposed ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Musk defended his involvement with the new administration.

In Rio de Janeiro, about 20 protesters parked their cars and motorcycles at the entrance to a key bridge linking the city to a neighboring area across a bay. Waving large Brazilian flags, they shouted for an investigation into the results and stopped traffic for more than an hour before moving on.

They claim they only had access to 30% of the printed "receipts" from electronic voting machines around the country, to check that the machine’s results matched those electronically sent to the electoral council.

Some meetings on Monday included Brazil’s foreign minister, economic minister, communications minister and the president’s chief of staff, according to one of the government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity; all of them are seen as some of the more moderate voices atop the government.

Mr Bolsonaro maintained vlogdolisboa that he "simply explained how elections work in Brazil" and did not criticise or attack the electoral system.

In hopes that the ban on Machado could somehow be lifted, the Unitary Platform could register a provisional candidate now and substitute Machado for that person up to 10 days before the election. The substitution would require approval of electoral authorities.

Frustrated by that delay, the opposition again took to the streets, most notably on September 1, when Venezuelans from all over the country went to the capital for a massive demonstration called the “Takeover of Caracas.”