Weeks before the Honduran presidential election on November 30, a test revealed deep flaws in the vote counting system: only 36% of the practice ballots were processed, according to the member of the electoral council Marlon Ochoa. That warning proved prophetic.
Now, almost two weeks after the elections, the presidential vote remains paralyzed with hundreds of thousands of uncounted ballots, rival candidates exchanging accusations of fraud and an electoral system halted by delays and dysfunctions.
The chaos has plunged the country of 11 million people into political limbo. Tension is rising and trust in the process is eroding.
The preliminary count shows Nasry Asfura of the conservative National Party just 40,000 votes ahead of Salvador Nasralla of the center-right Liberal Party. Almost 15% of the tally sheets, which comprise hundreds of thousands of votes, present “inconsistencies” and have not been counted.
Nasralla has taken advantage of information problems to denounce fraud, while President Xiomara Castro, of the leftist LIBRE Party, denounced the process as an “electoral coup.” US President Donald Trump, who has publicly supported Asfura, has also alleged fraud, without presenting evidence.
None of the main international observers, including the European Union and the Organization of American States, have expressed concern about systematic fraud. Instead, half a dozen experts told Reuters that infighting within the electoral body caused critical delays in preparations and that both Honduran political parties and outside actors, including Trump, have undermined confidence in the results themselves.
“This was a deliberate fabrication of a low-quality electoral process,” declared Héctor Corrales, a political analyst in Tegucigalpa. “The only thing that could have saved this election was a large margin of victory.”
Delays and system failures in the Electoral Council
Honduras’ electoral body, the CNE, is led by three officials, each of whom represents one of the main political parties. The body is responsible for preparing, supervising and validating the elections.
One of its crucial functions was to hire a company to process the ballots. However, in July, Ochoa of the LIBRE Party boycotted monthly CNE meetings, delaying the start of the bidding process, election observers told Reuters.
Ochoa did not respond to a request for comment.
Finally, on August 30, The electoral body chose Grupo ASDa company based in Bogotá that has participated in local and national elections in Colombia.
Election experts and observers told Reuters that the company’s systems were woefully underprepared for the Honduran electoral process, which has specific requirements to prevent fraud, and that they did not have enough time to prepare due to the CNE’s delay.
“Their teams did not have enough capacity,” said Carlos Hernández, director of the Association for a More Just Society, a nonprofit organization in Tegucigalpa. “Three months for a company to prepare for such a complicated election is not enough.”
Grupo ASD machines had difficulties scanning the minutes at the polling stations and transmitting them digitally to Tegucigalpa. The company has also paused vote counting, at least once for several days, for maintenance since the election, which has prolonged the process.
ASD Group did not respond to a request for comment.
“There are so many doubts and so many problems that there should be a complete recount,” said Laura Carlsen, a political analyst who was in Honduras as an election observer.
Internal disputes and international interference
Before the November elections, the vote had already become highly politicized, with political parties accusing each other of manipulating the vote or undermining confidence in the result.
The biggest scandal of this type broke out in October, when the attorney general opened an investigation against Councilor Cossette López-Osorio, of the National Partyfor allegedly discussing plans with a military officer to influence the election. LIBRE presidential candidate Rixi Moncada told Reuters that the alleged conspiracy proved it was “the most cheating election in history.” Moncada is a distant third in the vote count.
López-Osorio did not respond to a request for comment. He National Party She has claimed that the investigation was an attempt to intimidate her.
As domestic tensions rose, some political figures looked abroad for help.
In November, former prosecutor Sandra Ponce and the former president of the Supreme Court of Justice of HondurasVilma Morales, traveled to Geneva and Washington. Both are from opposition parties. Ponce told Reuters they were worried that LIBRE would try to sabotage the elections.
Ponce said she was pleased when, on Nov. 25, U.S. Undersecretary of State Christopher Landau expressed concern about the “interference, intimidation and political pressure” affecting CNE members. However, their enthusiasm was quelled when, a day later, Trump publicly endorsed Asfura.
“Trump crossed a red line,” Ponce told Reuters.
On December 6, the ruler FREE Party requested the Honduran electoral body to annul the vote due, in part, to interference from Washington.
For now, the count continues. On Saturday, the CNE plans to begin a special manual recount of the minutes marked by inconsistencies.
The CNE has until December 30 to validate the electoral results.
