Venezuelans voted against Maduro’s grip on power in the election

Those fears have been heightened by Mr Maduro telling his supporters he will win by “hook or crook”.

But speaking to the BBC’s Newshor, Venezuela’s attorney-general, Tarek William Sapp, said the country’s electoral system was “fraud-proof” and “one of the best voting systems in the world”.

After voting early on Sunday in the capital Caracas, Mr Maduro vowed to “ensure” that the results announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE) would be respected.

The CNE — the body that organizes the election and announces the official result — is dominated by government loyalists.

Its leader, Elvis Amoroso, is a close personal ally of Mr Maduro.

“The word of the arbitrator is sacred,” Mr Maduro added in comments to reporters.

Mr González, who voted later in the day in Caracas, described the event as “a day of reconciliation for all Venezuelans”, adding: “The time for change has come.”

If he wins the election, he has promised to do “everything possible” to rescue those who fled the country in the wake of the country’s economic collapse.

Venezuelans began arriving before voting opened at 06:00 local time (10:00 GMT), and long queues formed at polling stations across the country.

Tensions rose outside a polling station in Caracas, where queuing voters clashed as they waited for the doors to open, Reuters news agency reported.

Polls will close at 18:00 local time (22:00 GMT) and results will begin to emerge in a few hours.

The country has only a very small number of independent election observers to monitor the vote – four from the United Nations and a small technical team from the US-based Carter Center.

The head of the electoral commission, a close ally of Mr Maduro, canceled an invitation for European Union observers to attend.

Former Argentine President Alberto Fernandez was also not invited after saying the Maduro government must accept a possible defeat in the election.

However, Mr Maduro has welcomed hundreds of guests from countries allied with his government, who he says will “come with” the vote.

Meanwhile, the opposition has mobilized thousands of people to act as witnesses at individual polling stations.

Despite the many hurdles the opposition has faced — ongoing harassment and the arrest of more than 100 people linked to its campaign since the start of the year — the opposition is sounding an optimistic note.

It argues that opinion polls have given its candidate such a large lead over President Maduro that he is unlikely to “steal the election”.

Dismissing opinion polls cited by the opposition, the government maintained its candidate was ahead.

Mr Maduro himself used blunter language ahead of the election, warning of “bloodshed” if he was defeated.

That statement earned him a rare rebuke from Brazil’s leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who said Mr Maduro should learn “if you win, you stay in power, but if you lose, you go”.

Mr Maduro has used the image of a fighting cock as a symbol for his campaign and has struck a belligerent note.

“We have weathered more than a thousand storms. They cannot defeat us, they never will,” he said in his closing rally, citing some of the challenges he has faced in his 11-year rule.

Following his re-election in 2018, widely dismissed as lacking independence and fairness, he fended off opposition leader Juan Quito’s attempt to oust him by declaring himself the rightful president.

More than 50 countries, including the United States and the European Union, support Mr. Caido, and Mr. Maduro can count on the loyalty of Venezuela’s security forces.

In the end, Mr Quito’s parallel government withered, and Mr Maduro took advantage of it to portray himself as the “defender of Venezuelan sovereignty”.

“On Sunday, we will prove it to the fascists, to the imperialists. We will chant, ‘Long live Venezuela, my beloved motherland,'” he said.

But despite the fighting talk, many Maduro critics see the election — the first in a decade in which most of the opposition has united behind a candidate and not boycotted the polls — as their best shot at ousting him.

Not only was their chosen candidate, María Corina Machado, barred from running for office, they had to overcome many obstacles en route to the vote.

Those who want to see a regime change have rallied behind 74-year-old Edmundo Gonzalez to replace him in record time.

One of the promises made by the opposition is that if it wins, it will turn the country around so that millions of Venezuelans who fled the political and economic crisis experienced under the Maduro administration can return.

With the exodus of 7.8 million Venezuelans and polls suggesting the exodus could increase if Mr Maduro wins, the election will be closely watched in the United States and Latin American countries, where Venezuelans have largely left.