CARACAS, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) -- The referendum on Venezuela's constitutional reform is progressing without problems in all the nation's 11,132 polling stations, Sandra Oblitas, the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), told media on Sunday.

    Over 16.1 million voters are registered to take part in the vote over whether to change 69 provisions of the nation's 350-article constitution, including provisions allowing indefinite presidential reelection.

    Asked about reports that voters had received text messages ordering them to vote for a particular option, Oblitas said: "If any voter is experiencing a situation which he considers should be reported officially, he should go ahead and do so."

    Also on Sunday, Henrique Carriles Radonski, the mayor of Caracas borough Baruta, had said that the fingerprint matching electronic ballot boxes had shown delays when used. Oblitas told media that none of the machines had shown evidence of this during testing.

    "So far, we have not had any reports from voters about delays in the process due to voting machines," she said. She also said she considered the current system had sped up voting, because it identifies the page and row which locating each voter in the voting book.

    Separately on Sunday, German Mundarain, head of the People's Defense Body (DP), called on all Venezuelans to recognize the results published by the CNE, in a statement to media as he waited to vote.

    "The call is to recognize the CNE result. It is in the rules of the game before you submit to a competition," said the head of the DP, a state-funded body charged with promoting human rights and fighting abuses of power.

    "There is a large turnout at polling stations and this indicates confidence in the electoral referee. That in turn indicates the hardiness of the constitutional rules in a participative democracy," Mundarain said, speaking from the Venezuela Experimental School, in Caracas's Andres Bello Avenue.

    "Let all Venezuelans express their opinion and tolerate one another in the spaces where we have to live together: in the queue waiting for the polling stations to open."

    Official vehicles patrolled Venezuelan streets at 4:00 a.m. local time on Sunday blasting folkloric music and a military reveille, while fireworks were released overhead to wake up citizens for voting, which began at 6:00 a.m. local time.

    Senior government officials wore red, the color used by the ruling Fifth Republic Movement party, as they queued to vote. These included the nation's vice-president, Jorge Rodriguez and the ministers of agriculture and telecommunications.

    The reform is promoted by Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, as part of his project to bring in what he calls 21st Century Socialism. The reforms include restructuring Venezuela's political power structure, Socialist economic reform, strengthening of grassroots power structures and making social projects promoted under Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution into constitutional obligations.

    Venezuela's current constitution was written in 1999, replacing a constitution that was last reformed in 1961.

    More than 200 observers from 50 nations are observing the vote, which will end at 4:00 p.m. local time.