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The Latest: More governments dismiss Venezuela assembly vote

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The latest on Venezuela’s political crisis and the vote for a constitutional assembly (all times local) :
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – The latest on Venezuela’s political crisis and the vote for a constitutional assembly (all times local) :
6: 50 p.m.
A growing number of countries are vowing not to recognize the results of Venezuela’s divisive election of a constituent assembly that could dramatically reshape the South American nation’s government.
Officials from Argentina, Peru and the United States said Sunday that their governments would not recognize the vote, following similar statements from Colombia and Panama.
U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has tweeted that the vote a « sham election » that takes Venezuela « another step toward dictatorship. »
Peru’s government says the vote violates the Venezuelan constitution and deepens already significant divides within society.
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3: 40 p.m.
Venezuela’s chief prosecutor’s office is reporting three deaths on the day of a controversial vote for a constituent assembly that opposition leaders fear will trigger the end of democracy in Venezuela.
The office tweeted that 28-year-old Angelo Mendez and 39-year-old Eduardo Olave were killed at a protest Sunday in Merida. Thirty-year-old Ricardo Campos was killed in a separate incident in Sucre.
Few details were provided on the deaths.
Leaders with the opposition Democratic Action party on Twitter identified Campos as the group’s youth secretary in Sucre, a state in northern Venezuela east of the nation’s capital.
The deaths bring to at least 116 those killed in nearly four months of political upheaval.
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1: 10 p.m.
Venezuelans appear to be abstaining in massive numbers in a show of silent protest against a vote to select a constitutional assembly giving the government virtually unlimited powers. Across the capital on Sunday, dozens of polling places were empty or had a few dozens or hundreds of people outside, orders of magnitude less than the turnout in recent elections.
An Associated Press reporter toured more than two dozen polling places in neighborhoods across the capital, including many traditional strongholds of the ruling socialist party in southern and western Caracas. Virtually all the polling places had seen hours-long lines of thousands of people in the elections of the last two decades of the socialist administration.
One site, a sports and cultural complex known as the Poliedro, had several thousand people waiting about two hours to vote, many having traveled from opposition-dominated neighborhoods where polling places were closed. Of the dozens of others sites seen by the AP, two in the loyalist-heavy neighborhood of El Valle had lines of approximately 200 to 400 people. All the others had at most a couple of dozen voters, and many had less than a half-dozen or were completely empty.
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9 a.m.
Dozens of Venezuelans are gathering early at voting centers in Caracas’ Petare neighborhood, saying they plan to cast ballots because they hope for improvements in their lives.
Hairdresser Luisa Marquez said she hoped to get a house as she waited with her daughter in a line outside a center to vote Sunday for an all-powerful constitutional assembly that Maduro’s opponents fear he’ll use to replace Venezuela’s democracy with a single-party authoritarian system.
« I hope things get better,  » said Marquez after acknowledging that Venezuelans are experiencing tough economic times.
The run-up to the vote has been marked by months of clashes between protesters and the government, and the Trump administration has imposed successive rounds of sanctions on high-ranking members of Maduro’s administration, with the support of countries including Mexico, Colombia and Panama.
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7: 50 a.m.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is asking for global acceptance as he casts an unusual pre-dawn vote for an all-powerful constitutional assembly that his opponents fear he’ll use to replace the country’s democracy with a single-party authoritarian system.
Accompanied by close advisers and state media, Maduro voted at 6: 05 a.m. local time, far earlier and less publicly than in previous elections. The run-up to Sunday’s vote has been marked by months of clashes between protesters and the government, including the fatal shooting of a 61-year-old nurse by men accused of being pro-government paramilitaries during a protest this month at a church a few hundred feet from the school where Maduro voted.
« We’ve stoically withstood the terrorist, criminal violence,  » Maduro said. « Hopefully the world will respectfully extend its arms toward our country. »
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