Nicolás Maduro digs in with the help of a pliant Supreme Court

That will never happen. Everyone knows the clear winner of the election was Edmundo González, a former diplomat and the stand-in for the popular opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was banned from running. The indelible evidence of his victory is the paper receipts from more than 25,000 voting machines, four-fifths of the total, which the opposition obtained and published online. These show Mr González won 67% of the vote, to Mr Maduro’s 30%. The regime tried to make its victory look legitimate by asking the Supreme Court, which it controls, to validate it. State television broadcast masked officials opening election boxes and perusing supposed vote receipts. On August 22nd the pantomime concluded with the court endorsing as “definitive” the original official result, which gave a comfortable victory to Mr Maduro.