Have the same thing in Australia. Not passport but I returned after years overseas and I think I was applying for a tax file number (or bank account, or both!)

I was just really lucky my father had an old family friend who wss a teacher to sign the paperwork

What WERE their findings though? I read that link and 80% of it was talking about the “history of Venezuela’s elections”

Only relevant bit was 5 people went to a few poling stations each and they didn’t see anything odd and people seemed to be happy to vote. I didn’t see them claim to have done anything that could be considered proving the elections were fair one way or another, other than no obvious fraud at the polling stations themselves.