The ruling United Socialist Party of leader Nicolas Maduro won overwhelmingly Sunday’s local elections in Venezuela amid a very low turnout as most of the opposition was banned from the vote and most people preferred to spend the day trying to buy food and medicine in the crisis-stricken country that holds the biggest oil reserves in the world. Only 27 percent of Venezuela’s 20 million voters bothered to go to the polls, and Maduro’s party won most of the 2,500 council seats up for grabs, according to Venezuelan authorities, who praised the vote as “strengthening Venezuela’s democracy.” Maduro said that Venezuela is “consolidating its democracy” and in a speech on state television he accused the White House of trying to overthrow his regime. “Despite the conspiracies that come from the White House to divide our country, we have a strong democracy,” Maduro said . Despite Maduro’s claims of ‘strong […]