All posts by coordinator
Juan Orlando Hernandez ahead in preliminary results
Preliminary results to be announced at 9 pm
Originally planned for 7 pm, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal will announce preliminary results at 9 pm here [Website is currently down]
On TV Globo, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya of the LIBRE Party is declaring herself the next President of Honduras while Juan Orlando Hernandez of the National Party is saying the same of himself on Channel 5.
Voting table Representative Caught Counting LIBRE votes as PAC votes.
A text message from a HSN team in the Neighbourhood Las Mercedes:
6:56 PM “At a table in Simon Bolivar [school] in the neighbourhood Las Mercedes, table members caught one person recording the votes for LIBRE as a vote for PAC two separate times in the Presidential count. When they finished, the votes at the end did not add up and they reopened the envelopes to count again.
It seems they had miscounted the number of votes not cast. There are at least 30 tables at this centre and they are not in numerical order making one table difficult to find during voting and at least one person was ready to give up at one point because he couldn’t find his table.”
7:22 PM “Also its a madhouse here. The main doors are wide open. National party people periodically scream ‘Juan Orlando’ and its loud and hard to concentrate”
Military Police close Voting Centre & Prevent Observation of Vote Counting in Morazan neighbourhood, Teguc
International Observers Asked to Leave During Vote Count in La Joya
A HSN team observing the vote counting along with National Observers in the La Joya neighborhood in Tegucigalpa were approached by the ‘Custodio’ [Voting table supervisor] asking all National Observers to leave the voting station.
Half an hour later, the Voting Table Supervisor returned with a military officer and said that all the International Observers had to leave as well. She told the team that “the TSE had called and said that everyone had to leave.” She said that people were complaining of interference. After insisting that they were in their rights to observe the vote counting, the International Observers remained.
Radio Progreso has received reports of similar incidents that they will be reporting on shortly.
Some polls closed early in Antigua, Ocotepeque, some people turned away
Voting Table Closed Momentarily When Liberal Party Reps Attempted to Join the Table
An HSN team reports from the Centro de Educación Basica Simon Bolivar in the neighbourhood Las Mercedes that Liberal Party representatives showed up at the voting table 7963 attempting to join the table. By Honduran law, voting table representatives cannot join the table after 9 am. The team reported that the Liberal party representatives began arguing with the rest of the reps at the table forcing the military to close the doors of the voting centre and shut it down for approximately 5 minutes. The Liberal party representatives were then escorted out of the voting centre.
Article from BBC News: Honduras voters choose new president amid tight security
Honduras voters choose new President amid tight security article from BBC News: Latin America and the Carribean, discusses the death of 5 individuals in the eastern department of Gracias a Dios [an area known as La Moskitia]
“Queues started forming early in the morning and a high turn-out is expected, authorities said.The polling stations opened at 07:00 local time (13:00 GMT) and close at 17:00 at the latest. Around 5.4m Hondurans are registered to vote.The most serious incident on Sunday was the killing of five men a few metres away from the polling station of Juan Francisco Bulnes, in the eastern La Mosquitia, close to the border with Nicaragua.Initial reports said it was not clear whether the crimes, which happened shortly before the opening of the polls, had any links to the elections. Authorities say the shooting caused panic and delayed the start of the process in the town.”