On Sunday, November 26th Honduras conducted general elections. Sadly, after nine days of counting, the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) has not been able to declare a winner due to several failures in their processing of the votes.
Given the tight margin between the most voted candidates (1.5% of the voter roll) and the great number fraud claims and irregularities (e.g. numerical inconsistencies, problems with loading the tally), the TSE is carrying out a recount that has delayed the process for over a week and triggered a political earthquake.
This episode shows clearly, once again, the obsolescence of the Honduran voting system, and how manual voting can delay the publication in results and hurt the credibility of institutions.
To make matters worse, violence took hold in several regions of the country, leading authorities to decree a curfew. Deaths, looting, vehicles set ablaze, unrest and all forms of protest went on for days, creating a dire prognosis for the stability of Honduran democracy.
A sequence of unfortunate events
The poor performance of manual counting was visible from the early hours of the process on, when the Supreme Electoral Court announced they could not communicate the result of the count because of insufficient information. Immediately after, two of the candidates – president Juan Orlando Hernández and Salvador Nasralla– proclaimed themselves as winners, opening the floodgates.
The first data came almost 48 hours after the voting closed, after a slow count of less than 60% of the ballots which, far from clearing the air, only made matters worse.
In the following days, a series of situations took place casting even more doubt. For instance, after the first bulletin, in which opposition candidate Nasralla had a lead of almost 5 points on Hernández, the TSE page stopped updating for almost 36 hours; when it came back online, the result had reverted.
Right after, another technical failure on the Electoral Court website stopped the publication of results, and from then on, distrust was total for Nasralla, his supporters and a good section of the electorate.
Nasralla accuses the ruling party of having committed fraud, and states that 5,173 polling centre counts show the irregularities that are robbing him of victory. To explain how the count was altered, he requested an audience with the observation mission of the Organization of American States (OAS).
This request opens a new chapter for Honduras. Elections are over and the count is too, but the electoral process is still ongoing, waiting for the proclamation of the winner.
For now, the TSE is defending its voting model, but let us remember that some months ago there was a scandal that tarnished the system for Preliminary Results Transmission (Trep) and the Integrated System for Vote Counting and Results Publishing (Siede). The former oversees the telephone transmission of manual counts to a tally centre; the latter allows for the scanning and online transmission of certified voting returns.
Both models have been used for several years: Trep since 2009 and Siade since 2012, presenting several issues and sowing mistrust. However, this year, information came to light about the origin of the contracts subscribed by the TSE and companies such as Mapa Soluciones, Geotech and Corporación Majo, which violate the minimum norms for transparency and legality for the award of public contracts.
In face of the accusations, and after what happened in the November 26th general elections, it is clear that transparency in electoral matters is precarious in Honduras. The country faces a decisive moment: they can either purge the management of their public contracts and transform their voting model, or permanently hurt the credibility of electoral authorities and public trust.
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