Democracy Is Green

It was the most democratic election in Venezuela's history. In the remote cattle towns of the Andes, in the boisterous oil camps of the coast, more than a million citizens queued up to choose the 160 members of a Constituent Assembly that would write a new constitution (Venezuela's 19th) and elect a new Provisional President.

A shortage of pens for registering voters had threatened to delay the balloting. Authorities beat the illiteracy problem by printing a different colored ticket for each of the 15 competing parties. The voter thus had merely to select his favorite color from the fistful of slips handed him, and seal the card in an envelope as he stood in the secret polling booth.

As each voter left the polls he dipped the little finger of his right hand into a green fluid. That was to keep him from voting twice. The creation of one Dr. Roberto Finol of Maracaibo, the green dye was supposed to be proof against soap, acid or anything for at least a couple of days. Venezuelans read the inscription on the bottle--". . . to guarantee universal suffrage"--and submitted willingly.

Provisional President Romulo Betancourt's new-dealish Action Democrdtica Party won by a landslide, away out in front of the conservative Copei Party, the middle-of-the-road Democratic Republican Union and the Communists.

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