Q24N — The lack of definitive results keeps Honduras in uncertainty, days after the November 30 general elections. The vote count continues to be hampered by slow processing of tally sheets and repeated system outages.
Adding to this situation are accusations of fraud launched by the ruling party, without providing any evidence. The candidate for the Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre), Rixi Moncada, called for the annulment of the elections on Sunday night.
“Libre does not recognize the elections held under the interference and coercion of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the allied oligarchy who have attacked the Honduran people with an ongoing electoral coup,” said Moncada, who is currently in third place with 19.28% of the vote.
With 88% of the ballots processed, Nasry Asfura of the National Party has 40.21% of the vote, and Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party has 39.49%. Days before the election, Trump endorsed Asfura and granted a pardon to former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking in a U.S. prison.
Both candidates said they had all the ballots and claimed to be the winners, although they heeded the electoral body’s call not to declare victory.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) called for calm and stated that the process is proceeding as planned. The institution attributed the recurring failures in the dissemination systems to the Colombian company Grupo ASD, which is in charge of the TREP, the platform that publishes the preliminary results.
The electoral director of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Eduardo Fuentes, told the Associated Press that the law allows 30 days to issue the official declaration. He explained that, once the voting process concluded, all tally sheets had to be scanned and sent via the internet to the CNE’s data collection center for processing and subsequent publication.
The president of the CNE, Ana Paola Hall, stated on Sunday that “at this time we cannot avoid saying that the CNE imposes and will continue to impose significant demands on the contracting company, but we must remember that… the paramount interest is the general elections.”
After publishing 88% of the tally sheets, the process entered Contingency 1, which covers scanned tally sheets that could not be transmitted. Contingency 2 then began, for tally sheets that were neither scanned nor sent. “We are in Contingency 2,” Fuentes stated.
In this phase, 7,776 tally sheets will be reviewed, 2,294 of which correspond to the presidential election. Their processing could widen or narrow the gap between Asfura and Nasralla. If the difference narrows, a special recount will determine the outcome.
Fuentes explained that the special recount reviews tally sheets with inconsistencies, errors, or those that were not returned. “Once the special recount is completed, the general recount is considered finished, and a declaration of results is issued,” he stated. According to his estimates, the process could be completed “within seven to eight days.”
For this stage, 150 Special Verification Boards will be established, each composed of a representative from each party, one from the National Electoral Council (CNE), an international observer, and a delegate from the auditing firm. The Special Prosecutor’s Office for Electoral Crimes will also participate, and cameras will be present at all times. The work will be carried out 24 hours a day.
The Organization of American States (OAS) urged the National Electoral Council (CNE), in a statement, to expedite the vote count with mechanisms that guarantee traceability and accuracy.
On November 30, Hondurans elected a new president, three vice presidents, 128 members of Congress (both primary and alternate), and 298 mayors and deputy mayors.