voter rolls by giving citizenship to illegal immigrants and refugees; and the opposition claimed that it was a citizenship for votes program. Voter registration increased by about 2 million people ahead of the referendum, which in effect raised the threshold of the 20% of the electorate needed to effect a recall. Reports again emerged that Chávez and his allies were penalizing signers of the publicly posted petition. Charges were made of summary dismissals from government ministries, PDVSA, the state-owned oil corporation, the Caracas Metro, and public hospitals controlled by Chávez's political allies. Finally, after opposition leaders submitted to the CNE a valid petition with 2,436,830 signatures that requested a presidential recall referendum, a recall referendum was announced on 8 June 2004 by the CNE. Chávez and his political allies responded to this by mobilizing supporters to encourage rejection of the recall with a "no" vote. The recall vote itself was held on 15 August 2004. A record number of voters turned out to defeat the recall attempt with a 59% "no" vote. The election was overseen by the Carter Center and the Organization of American States, and was certified by them as fair and open. European Union observers did not attend, saying the government had placed too many restrictions on their participation. Critics called the results fraudulent, citing documents which indicated that the true results were the complete opposite of the reported ones, and raising questions about the government ownership of voting machines. "Massive fraud" was alleged and Carter's conclusions were questioned, although five other opposition polls showed a Chávez victory. While the OAS observers and a reluctant Bush administration, endorsed the results, a few critics, including economists Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard and Roberto Rigobon of MIT, alleged that certain procedures in the election may have allowed the government to cheat. The Carter Center admitted Taylor had "found a mistake in one of the models of his analysis which lowered the predicted number of tied machines, but which still found the actual result to lie within statistical possibility." A jubilant Chávez pledged to redouble his efforts against both poverty and "imperialism," while promising to foster dialogue with his opponents. Chávez's government subsequently charged the founders of Súmate with treason and conspiracy for receiving foreign funds, earmarked for voter education, from the United States Department of State through the National Endowment for Democracy, triggering commentary from human rights organizations and the