By Francisco Toro

Back in 2007, Venezuela saw the rise of a boisterous student movement, as university students spilled out onto the streets in  protest over the government’s decision to shut down the most popular TV stations in the country. Three years later, the  student movement is no longer out on the streets; they’re far too busy with the phone banks for that stuff.

With less than two weeks to go before the crucial legislative elections, Venezuela’s student movement is coming of age. Far  from turning away from politics, students have quietly remade themselves into the backbone of a  sophisticated election-day ground game. And while the movement can’t hope to match the seemingly limitless  resources of a hyper-empowered petro-state, it’s already clear that, for the first time in the Chávez era, this election cycle the  opposition is not about to wave a white flag in the ground war before a shot is fired.

“Back in 2008, we even called our organization here ‘Estudiantes en la Calle’ – ‘Students out in the Street,’” says Dayana  Mendez, a 21-year-old journalism student active with the movement in Carabobo State. “This time, we’ve decided our role  has to be different: instead of protesting in the streets, we’re giving people reasons to vote, and the tools to defend their vote.”

Two organizations are leading the student charge: DefiendeTuVoto.com (DefendYourVote) and VotoJoven.com (YoungVote). As its name implies, DefiendeTuVoto.com focuses on recruiting and training witnesses both inside and outside polling stations to help prevent the kinds of irregularities that have marred previous elections. VotoJoven.com, meanwhile, is working to demystify Venezuela’s complex voting system and promote voting among young people - a key demographic, considering that Venezuelans under 30 make up 46% of the country’s registered voters.

Though officially non-partisan, the groups liaise closely with Venezuela’s opposition parties and with opposition-minded NGOs such as ESDATA.info. On the basis of careful statistical analysis of recent election results, ESDATA has identified the congressional districts most open to government abuse, pinpointing the specific polling stations where statistical anomalies suggest the vote has being rigged.

For example, if people in one polling station voted 85% for the government, but that polling station is surrounded by four others that voted 56%, 58%, 53% and 55% for the government, it seems likely some kind of electoral hanky-panky was at play. ESDATA’s analysis flags such anomalies, bringing them to the students’ attention. They are then charged with recruiting, training and supporting witnesses to go to the problem stations and watch them like hawks on election day, with a camera-enabled cell-phone in hand, of course.

In the past, allegations of vote rigging have concentrated in poorer, more pro-government areas: precisely the type of areas where many polling stations had no trained witnesses at all. With no one watching over their shoulders, pro-government poll workers could simply line up at the end of the day and vote in place of those who had “forgotten” to turn up. The results, in some cases, bordered on the comical, such as the one polling station in Apure State that had 100% turnout and 100% pro-government votes in the February 2009 referendum on a Constitutional amendment.

The problem, for the last several cycles, has been that witnesses have crowded around reliably opposition-minded areas – where they are least needed – leaving no one to watch the problem areas. “In election after election, we have had a dozen witnesses in every polling station in the [relatively affluent] East of Caracas, where the voting is like in Switzerland,” says one movement activist who asked not to be named, “but no witnesses at all in the barrios, where voting is more like in Iran.”

This year, the student movement is going all out to make sure this kind of situation doesn’t happen again. Along with a concerted drive to sign up, train and support witnesses, the movement is working aggressively to make sure they’re sent to voting centers with a history of irregularities when no one is there to watch. Other students are organizing roving squads to make sure that the areas directly outside polling stations are free of the kind of voter intimidation – or even vote-buying – that have also become standard features of Venezuelan elections.

With less than two weeks to go, the students are bullish. Though the decentralized nature of their movement makes national figures hard to come by, it’s clear that in much of the country, chavistas are going to have to deal with an unprecedented opposition ground game. Some areas where chavismo has traditionally been unencumbered by witnesses – like the pro-government South-side of Valencia – are nearly booked solid with student witnesses this time around, making the opposition competitive in areas long seen as wide open to government intimidation and abuse.

* Francisco Toro is a Venezuelan journalist, political scientist and blogger.  He edits since 2002 Caracas Chronicles, a well-known blog about Venezuela.