More Audit Irregularities

Thanks to the incredible people over at the Voto Social we now have another anomaly related to the Actas, that the timestamps added by the ATX system when it scanned the actas have been systematically removed from the images of all but 3,737 actas in the TSE system.

Just to refresh your understanding of this part of the voting hardware and software, each MER submits a vote tally sheet, an acta, as a paper form to be scanned and transmitted to the TSE.  The scanning software adds a time stamp in the upper left to the images of actas before encoding the image, its MER number, and other data into a JSON post to the TSE main computer system in Tegucigalpa.  Here's a sample, as originally downloaded by the Voto Social website from the TSE archive:

Note the small text above the TSE and 2017.

Here's how the same acta appears in the TSE system today:

Suddenly the ATX scanning software added text on the acta image is missing.  There is no conceivable reason for anyone to edit the image to remove that data, except that it provides a way to precisely audit when the images were added to the TSE database.  So someone removed information that could have been used to audit the addition and counting of actas in the TSE system.

In addition, the ATX scanners provided better quality scans so that you could actually see the security measures on each acta, such as the special tape that was put on the acta over the vote tallies to prevent alteration.  You can see the left edge of the tape on the top image, but its almost undetectable on the bottom one.  They noted that on some of the original scans you could even read the security watermark in the tape, while on the scans in the TSE system, it is invisible.  You can see the full images from which these details were extracted on the Voto Social website here.

They take all of the above as evidence that the TSE for some reason rescanned or edited actas that were transmitted on a non ATX scanner and entered them in some other fashion in the TSE database.  They note that there is no established protocol in the TSE that would require the rescanning or editing of ATX images.  They also note that there are no attempts on these actas to change any of the data....just the curiosity that original time stamped images were replaced with lower quality images that removed the time stamp information that could have been used to audit the arrival of each MER's acta.  No international observers report being present when acta images were re-scanned or edited.

But there are other curiosities with the images as well.  The ATX transmitted version of acta 13014 has no signatures, but the image stored in the TSE database does.  You can see side by side copies here. The Voto Social authors suggest it was transmitted this way to allow the TSE to add the signatures, though why they would want to do that is not examined.  This particular acta contains more votes for Nasralla than it does for Hernandez.

What does this mean?  It means that there is undocumented either rescanning or editing of ATX scanned actas as part of TSE procedures, neither of which appears as part of the governing rules of the Sistema Integrado de Escrutinio y Divulgación Electoral (SIEDE), the composite TSE vote tallying system and software., for this election.

New numbers quietly added to the TSE website

At 4:17, a tweet from TSE head David Matamoros caused a slight ripple of concern; he said "There are still 7500 summaries of polling places to scrutinize, that represent some 2 million votes":

“Nos faltan unas 7,500 actas por escrutar que representan unos dos millones de votos y por eso se avanzará en los resultados en la medida que se vayan recibiendo".

If there actually were another 2 million votes to count, election results might be open to considerable change. After all, as of the TSE's 2 AM press briefing, they had only counted about 1.99 million votes. So that would mean there were more votes not yet counted than already included. But in fact, the TSE has affirmed that 59% of the votes have been counted.

So what is happening here? Let's try explaining, using the numbers from the TSE site, which by 7 PM tonight reflected additional counting.

In the following table,  we list the total votes counted in the more than 10,500 actas (results from individual polling places) reviewed so far. These polling places had a total of 3.6 million possible voters; 2.02 million votes were actually reported, for a participation rate of 58% (suggesting this election is a normal one for Honduras).

	Votes (millions)	Registered voters (millions)	actas	Participation rate
counted	2.020682	3.617484	10,503	58%
uncounted	unknown	2.429389	7,625	unknown
Total electorate	unknown	6.046873	18,128

Until those remaining actas are counted, no one knows what the number of votes there will be; Matamoros is referring to the number of potential voters. To reach 2 million votes out of the remaining 2.4 million registered voters would require over-voting of 83%. While (apparently fraudulent) over voting was one of the tactics used in the last election, it did not take place on such a massive scale. There is no reason to think that the remaining actas somehow include a higher proportion of motivated voters than those already counted, from the cities, where get out the vote campaigns took place.

So let's assume Matamoros meant only that there were 2 million registered voters whose chance to vote is included in the actas still to be counted. He doesn't want to disenfranchise them with a premature conclusion.

What might we expect when these votes actually are counted?

The TSE website as of 7 PM Monday presents new numbers, compared to the 2 AM baseline. They show Nasralla and Hernández both gaining votes, with Nasralla adding 2,000 votes to his lead.

Because so much of the vote has already been counted, even though the TSE added 30,000 votes overall, the percentages of each of the two leading candidates remained the same.

Here's those numbers:

	votes	vote share	change from 2 AM
Nasralla	868,473	45%	up 13,000
Hernández	772,458	40%	up 11,000

Unless there is a drastic increase in the proportion of registered voters exercising their rights to vote in the outstanding districts, most of which are in rural areas, we will expect about the same proportion of voting (currently 58%). This would add not 2 million, but 1.4 million more votes-- for a total electorate of 3.4 million, which is what we were projecting informally, based on our knowledge of previous elections.

	Votes (millions)	Registered voters (millions)	actas	Participation rate
counted	2.020682	3.617484	10,503	58%
Uncounted projected	1.409045	2.429389	7,625	58%
Total electorate	3.429727	6.046873	18,128

Could the so-far uncounted voters have a different profile than seen to date? Sure-- but here, remember how Marco Ramiro Lobo defended the late hour of the first official results from the TSE: they waited until repeated counting of actas wasn't changing the margin of 5% between the candidates.

The TSE doesn't expect a change. The numbers will go up; but to erase a lead of almost 100,000 votes, there would have to be very unusual voting patterns.

The situation in Tegucigalpa

On Twitter, sources associated with the coalition Alianza are reporting that the Tribunal Supremo Electoral has cut off their access to vote counts. UPDATE: The TSE, on Twitter, says they have not cut off data provided to the parties.

The TSE has announced that they will be making a statement soon-- but the deadline has passed.

Meanwhile, Juan Orlando Hernández has declared himself the winner, based on exit polling.

He has mobilized the armed forces to guard the entry to the capital city and deployed them in the Tribunal Supremo Electoral center in Tegucigalpa. He has said he won't tolerate any protests.

The Honduran news source NotiBomba is reporting on Twitter numbers they say they received from the TSE that show the Alianza candidate, Salvador Nasralla, in the lead, with 44.5%, to Hernández 41.3%. They are not clear on when they received these numbers. We do not know how much of the vote has been counted, but the number of votes reported by this source-- 3 million-- implies about 50-60% of the vote has been counted.

Shake Up In Control of the Christian Democrat Party of Honduras

The Honduran Partido Democráta Cristiano (PDCH) has split into two factions with two different leadership councils. Now it's up to the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) to decide which faction legitimately represents the party.

The PDCH was founded in 1968 but not recognized by the TSE until 1981.  It historically garnered between one and five Congressional Representatives in elections.

Since the coup in 2009 it has aligned itself with the ruling party.

In the last election, however, its presidential candidate received about 5000 votes or 0.17 % of the vote, and the party received only one Congressional seat. They gained a second Congressional representative in 2014 when Eduardo Coto joined the party, defecting from LIBRE.

By law, the TSE should have ceased to recognize the PDCH for failing to obtain enough votes to be considered a viable political party (set at 5%). Viability as a party has defined legal criteria because recognized parties receive funding from the TSE.

Other parties that received more presidential votes, such as Romeo Vasquez Velasquez's Partido Alianza Patriotica were disbanded by the TSE after their poor election showing in 2013. But that has not happened to the PDCH, perhaps because one of the three senior judges on its leadership panel, Saul Escobar, is a member. 

Coming out of the 2013 Elections, the PDCH, despite its small electoral constituency, had three factions attempting to gain power. One was controlled by Arturo Cruz Asensio, one by Nieves Fernando Perez and the third by Carlos Manzanares and Felicito Avila. This resulted in three different slates being nominated to compete for the party leadership, one headed by Cruz Asensio, a second by Carlos Manzanares, and a third by Nieves Fernando Perez.

Just before the party election, Manzanares and Fernando Perez stepped aside in the name of party unity.  Cruz Asensio was elected party President, and Manzanares Vice President. They replaced Felicito Avila and Lucas Aguilera in those posts. Cruz Asensio promised to be more questioning towards the ruling National Party, although there is no indication that he has been.

But all is not well.

A rift that developed between the current leadership and a faction led by Manzanares manifested in a violent meeting where people were throwing chairs and punches at each other. Disguised by rhetoric about old guard versus new guard, the attack on the party leadership turned out to be a long-planned attempt to co-opt this minor party in Honduras for personal gain, allegedly fomented by Arturo Corrales, the current Chancellor of the country.

Gissel Villanueva, an aide to Cruz Asensio said

“People paid by Arturo Corrales and his helpers, Felicito Avila, Carlos Romero and Jorge Bogran were the ones who started this fight and this they did because they are people who have already left the party but don't want to let go of power.....

The only thing that interests Arturo Corrales is power; what he wants is to have control over the three congressmen which this party has in the National Congress and which he doesn’t control; he wants these positions.”

Corrales has played a prominent role in both the Liberal Party and National Party governments that have ruled Honduras since the coup of 2009. He has held the cabinet posts of Security Minister and Head of Foreign Relations under both of the last two National Party Administrations. But his political career was made as a member of the minority Partido Democráta Cristiano, for which he was a presidential candidate in 1997.

On September 5th, a group claiming to be PDCH party leadership delegates met in Tegucigalpa and stripped Cruz Asensio of his party leadership role and elected Carlos Manzanares to that position.  In the very same meeting the disciplinary committee suspended the party membership of Arturo Corrales because of the attack at the youth meeting.  This appears to be a resurgence of the factionalism evident in 2014, with the Manzanares faction claiming control of the party leadership.

Cruz Asensio contests his demotion.  He called the meeting illegal because he neither convened it nor was present at it. He notes that the delegates who convened it were not the delegates registered with the TSE as the party's official delegates. David Aguilera, the party executive secretary called the suspension of Arturo Corrales illegal though he didn't state why. Luis Aguilera, who is part of the Manzanares faction, said that the 200 legal delegates were convened, conveying his position that the meeting was legal.

Now, the group that seized the leadership of the party has submitted to the TSE a leadership council headed by Manzanares with a replacement disciplinary committee, and with a new political committee headed by Arturo Corrales, and staffed by Felicito Avila, Ramon Velasquez Nazar, and Lucas Aguilera.

Augusto Cruz Asensio has submitted an appeal attempting to dismiss the other group's submission, arguing that the delegates that met were not those listed with the TSE as the law demands.

The TSE said that after combing its archives, it can find no filings listing the delegates for 2013, 2015, or 2015 for the PDCH. That greatly weakens Cruz Asensio's position, and the failure happened under this leadership.

At stake is more than control of a moribund electoral party: there is also the matter of control of votes for the upcoming selection of candidates for the Supreme Court.

Voto Social and Transparency

The independent digital initiative that was formed to publically recount the published Actas from the website of the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) of Honduras, Voto Social, has sent out an email to participants in the distributed project of verifying the data on the Actas they grabbed (15,637 Actas, just under 97% of the total). Their website currently says 83.03% of those Actas have been verified by three people.

In their email, the founders of this independent project summarize what they have achieved in the review of the presidential vote count. I copy below the precise language from their email about what they have and have not succeeded in doing.

On the success side: they have demonstrated that the scanned Actas "presented results different from the official ones". As they note, the totals on their website keep the positions of the candidates the same.

They go on to explicitly note that

the possibility that the Actas might be false continues to be open. Up to now, 10 false Actas have been reported (they were test Actas that in some way were in the system) and were corrected by the TSE, for transparency, we are keeping a copy of both versions of the images of the Actas.

The demonstration of flaws in the vote counting process by this project, and by the take-overs of the TSE software by Anonymous of Honduras, should concern everyone watching this race. It isn't enough to say "the outcome wouldn't have changed". The organizers of Voto Social don't feel that is the point of their project: they emphasize the desire on the part of the Honduran community for "transparency".

Honduran voters had a right to expect their votes to be counted accurately. The TSE clearly has failed that test. There are still questions about Actas that were not published on the TSE website; the TSE never acknowledged it was correcting its count; it has simply asserted that it was correct. That is the opposite of transparency.

What Voto Social cannot do, that would make a difference for the goal of transparency, is to examine the concerns raised about the Actas not accurately reflecting the votes cast and the intentions of voters who showed up at individual polling places. The most serious concerns expressed there have been, and continue to be, about the effect of buying of credential from smaller parties by Partido Nacional representatives, giving them more places at the local voting tables where the ballots were actually counted.

It bears repeating, because it is something that the international community seems not to really be acknowledging: the TSE count of Actas can be reviewed, independently checked, even recounted, without ever resolving whether, as ballots came out of boxes and were grouped on tables surrounded by disproportionate numbers of advocates for one party, the true distribution of votes was represented.

How many voting places saw incidents like the one reported by LIBRE representatives at the Minerva School in El Paraíso, in the Department of Copan? How much did incidents like these, unwitnessed by international observers, affect the numbers reported on the Actas-- whether those were entered accurately or inaccurately?

They tried to intimidate me at gunpoint to sign the tally sheets and ballots before leaving the table, which I did not agree to, and finally they forced me to give them my electoral worker credential and national identity card. We managed to leave the community. In the door of the school there were people asking voters whom they planned to vote for, and if it was not for the National Party candidate they simply were not allowed to enter.

As long as the parties run the local vote counts, transparency will remain elusive in Honduran elections. It is clear that the international community will endorse the election of the candidate of the Partido Nacional: what is unclear is whether it will exercise any pressure to push Honduras to move further away from the electoral system that leaves the people of the country without trust in elections.

¿Qué hemos logrado?

Hemos logrado comprobar que el resultado de las actas escaneadas en el SIEDE presentan resultados diferentes a los oficiales pero las posiciones de los candidatos permanece igual.

 

Sabemos que no es lo que muchos esperaban pero por transparencia y objetividad esos son los resultados que hemos obtenido....

¿Qué NO hemos logrado? 

Sabemos que sigue abierta la posibilidad de que las actas sean FALSAS. Hasta ahora se han reportado 10 actas falsas (eran actas de prueba que de alguna manera estaban en el sistema) y que ya fueron corregidas por el TSE, nosotros por transparencia guardamos copia de ambas versiones de las imágenes de las actas. 

Where the Recount Process Stands

Readers of English language media may have seen stories quoting a  press release from the Tribunal Supremo Electoral claiming that LIBRE failed to follow through yesterday on an agreement about starting the review of the Actas in the disputed presidential election.

But just reporting the TSE's press release is neither the whole story, nor is it accurate.

You are unlikely to have seen any reporting on LIBRE's response to the TSE press release, which is that David Matamoros, head of the TSE, was mistaken when he said the process of recounting the votes would begin yesterday, because there has been no agreement as to the procedures to be used for the process.

According to Matamoros, the process of rescanning the original tally sheets (Actas) to compare them with the scanned images in the TSE election counting system and contrast them with the certified versions of the Actas under LIBRE party control was supposed to begin yesterday. 

But in this procedure, there's no mechanism for a recount or handling suspected errors, only comparing versions of the Actas.  Nor was there a procedure for handling the 2000+ actas for which there are no scanned images, but for which the TSE has recorded vote counts.

Oscar Rivera, the elections overseer for LIBRE, told Proceso Digital that LIBRE indeed met with the TSE on Tuesday to arrange for the recount.  The TSE representatives presented a proposal for the way to proceed with the recount, but said if LIBRE was not in agreement, for them to propose an alternative. 

Rivera said

We received the proposal and the same night (Tuesday evening) we gave a formal reply to the Tribunal in which we asked for other mechanisms to assure the Honduran people that Honduran democracy would be respected and that the TSE was a serious [professional] organization, but with the reply that they gave us, they haven't convinced us.

Enrique Reina, campaign coordinator for Xiomara Castro, added

They haven't said what they will do when an Acta contains anomalies and we asked that if an Acta is inconsistent in some way, that they recount the votes [in that ballot box].

Oscar Rivera went on to note that there were other mechanisms that LIBRE could use in the election law to get the Actas validated.  He noted that they were awaiting a formal reply from the TSE magistrates that addressed their request of December 2, not the unilateral approach presented by the TSE in their press release.

So, for the moment, a recount is in a holding pattern while the TSE and LIBRE negotiate a process acceptable to both.

There's Going To Be a Recount (Of Sorts)

This morning Xiomara Castro and the LIBRE Party filed a formal set of complaints about the vote counting process and its lack of transparency, documenting errors and discrepancies in the formal counting of the tally sheets of the over 16,000 Mesas Electorales Receptoras (MER). 

LIBRE representative Ricki Moncada then read the document to the assembled press.

The Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) head David Matamoros agreed to a public recount of the Actas: not the votes themselves, just a recount of the votes as recorded on the tally sheets.

This, of course, is a compromise.  Ballot boxes will not be re-opened; individual votes will not be recounted. 

It's a vexing compromise because some of the problems that LIBRE alleges include alteration of the Actas themselves, which they say they can document. 

Remember that the election procedures gave the political parties a number of ways to get copies of the scanned/reported Acta at each step.  The party representative at every MER was supposed to be given a copy of the scanned Acta to take back to the party. Once the scanned Acta hit the TSE's computers, a copy was supposed to be sent to each party, and to the foreign vote auditors.

LIBRE says it has Actas sent to them by the TSE with scan dates of the early morning hours of the election day, bearing data that looks like the test data used to validate the system in earlier runs.  LIBRE also says they have copies of Actas that don't match the Acta image in the TSE central computing database, with different signatures and vote tallys.

Since the election itself on November 24, there has been a public recount of the scanned actas going on at this site:  http://conteo.votosocial.org.  In addition, there has been a Facebook-coordinated effort to identify Actas that contain problematic information or were mis-recorded in the TSE's vote counting system. 

Through these independent projects, more than 1600 problematic Actas had been identified by Saturday, November 30.

There is a further 2000+ Actas which the TSE has "sequestered" because of unspecified problems, for which vote counts, and images, have not been released.  Then there are a series of MERs for which vote totals are recorded, but no Acta image is posted.

I have been involved in the public recount of the Actas, entering the values from the scanned images of the Actas into a system that then recounts the votes once 3 separate reviews of the transcription agree that the data are correct. I also have reviewed Actas flagged on the Facebook page as problematic.  I can say first-hand that I found inconsistencies in more than 500 Actas I've reviewed over the last week. 

Some of the inconsistencies were transcription errors: the TSE had an enormous problem going from the hand-written numbers to recording those numbers in their MS-SQL database.  Over time, the TSE seemed to be correcting these transcription errors, though in a non-transparent fashion since they never acknowledged a single one of them.  Many still remained as of this past Saturday.

More troubling, though, is that the vote totals on far too many Actas added up to more than the number of people who were reported to have voted in that particular MER. 

Each Acta contains a field "Ciudadanos que votaron", which the TSE training manual documented as being calculated by taking the total number of ballots at the start of voting, and subtracting the number of blank ballots remaining at the end of voting.  The starting number of ballots and the calculated "Ciudadanos que votaron" are recorded on the official tally sheet.  The total number of votes being reported on the tally sheet should add up to the number of "Cuidadanos que votaron" but very frequently it does not. Based on my experience of trying to review the results, minor errors of 1, 2, and 3 over-votes are common, while over-votes of 50 or more happen less often. 

Reviewing and recounting the Actas alone will not correct these over-votes.  They merely become  enshrined in the result.

The public vote count shows results that differ from the TSE count, though not enough to change the outcome of the election.  But there are still 4.4% of the Actas which cannot be validated because the TSE released no image of them. This is enough to affect the margin between the two leading candidates, which might reflect the tighter race that most observers expected.

Then there's the issue of database security.  Anonymous Honduras has twice penetrated the vote counting center, and currently (late afternoon on December 2) has replaced the TSE's main web page with their own.  Their penetration made it clear they could have easily, and invisibly, changed the results in favor of any candidate they wanted to.  From details like their ability to show administrative tables, it seems that they had complete control over the database, and the TSE was apparently none the wiser.

So, there will be some sort of a recount of the Actas, with representatives of the political parties present to agree that the data entered into the system is what is on the Acta. The TSE has no idea what the procedures will be, or how they will do this, but something will happen. 

It's a step in the direction of transparency. But not the kind of recount that would put to rest, ultimately, the kinds of doubts that have been raised.

Proving Electoral Fraud Takes Time

We just had a twitter exchange with Alberto Arce, reporter for the AP. Here it is:

1. albertoarce ‏@alberarce 1h

   ¿por qué los periodistas tenemos esa mala manía de pedir pruebas de las cosas que la gente denuncia?.
2. Honduras Cult Politi ‏@HondurasCultPol 8m

   @alberarce why do proofs have to be provided faster than the TSE counts the vote? Maybe press could consider giving people time to respond

   
   
3. albertoarce ‏@alberarce 36s

   @HondurasCultPol I am not reporting fraud if those who claim it dont show the evidence. LIBRE said they won with 2.8% of the vote counted.

albertoarce ‏@alberarce 4m

@HondurasCultPol this is what I do. Report the findings of the intnal observers, the official results and wait.

As we added: we are fine with you waiting. Not so fine with the press setting the timeline for action.

Here's the issue for us: the TSE should be providing accurate counts. The international community is acting as if the TSE is providing accurate counts. So the approach is: prove these aren't the real numbers.

There are ongoing efforts to do just that. We are doing our own analysis, and have found that there are discrepancies with at least 500 actas so far.

Whether these errors result in a systematic undercount of LIBRE and/or PAC votes, or systematically add votes to the Partido Nacional, is not clear yet. Getting this kind of convincing, systematic documentation takes time.

We don't expect Alberto Arce, or any other reporter, to claim fraud. We just would hope that the international press could be a little more nuanced in reporting this story. If you are used to European or US electoral systems, it is hard to give credence to how things are done in Honduran elections-- to the essential fragility of the vote count system.

The TSE needs this long to tally part of the vote; demanding that the proof of inconsistencies be presented faster than the TSE counts can seem like taking sides to those frustrated by the process itself. And yes, that will make people in Honduras suspicious and critical of the press.

Anonymous and the TSE

Early Thursday Tiempo published a story headlined Anonymous enters the database of the TSE.

At the top of the screen is an image with the following caption:

Anonymous Honduras publicó esta imagen en su cuenta de Twitter en la cual demuestra que el Tribunal Supremo Electoral no contabiliza en el informe oficial 80 votos obtenidos por LIBRE, según el acta que registra los datos del centro de votación de una urna de la Escuela Ramón Amaya Amador de La Lima, Cortés.

[Anonymous Honduras published this image in its Twitter account in which it shows that the Tribunal Supremo Electoral did not count in the official results 80 votes obtained by LIBRE, according to the acta registering the data from the voting center of the polling place at the Escuela Ramón Amaya Amador in La Lima, Cortés.]

The lead paragraph is blunt:

Los hackers han puesto en tela de juicio la seguridad de la base de datos del Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) y han afirmado por medio de las redes sociales que si hubo fraude electrónico en estas elecciones.

[The hackers have cast doubt on the security of the TSE database and have affirmed by means  of social networks that there has been electronico fraud in these elections.]

Tiempo quotes Anonymous of Honduras saying there were "thousands" of pieces of evidence of this fraud on a blog they established where

los seguidores de esa organización cibernética que actúa bajo la clandestinidad colocaron imágenes de actas y las tablas oficiales de resultados que no concuerdan con los datos.

[followers of this cybernetic organization that acted clandestinely placed images of actas and the official tables of results that do not agree with the data.]

Separately, Tiempo reports that another hacker published details for accessing the database. They quote their own IT specialist, José Carlos Ramos saying that

the hackers are trying to demonstrate that the system of the TSE doesn't have the necessary security measures. "If it is the way the hackers say, the data base can be accessed from any place in Honduras or the world... It could be consulted and modified by a user that had access privileges from someplace outside the Tribunal."

Needless to say, this is not good news for those who would like the TSE count to be accepted as official and accurate. And it is not good news for Hondurans in general who turned out for this historic election.

TSE Vote Counting Errors

The OAS audit of the TSE's software was accurate in its concerns: the vote counting part is turning out to be less than perfect.

Observers have noted several anomalies, some of which have been corrected, and others of which have not.  Here's an example that was still visible in the system as of this morning.

Consider the following screenshot (from the TSE's website here) taken at 1:19 pm today.  Click on the image for a larger version.

This shows the scanned Acta for MER 3311 of the Escuela Leonardo Aguilar Oseguera school voting site in San Pedro Sula. On the left is the scanned Acta; on the right are the vote totals that the TSE credited to each candidate for this MER.

Precisely how those vote totals enter the system is unclear from TSE-provided information.  Are the handwritten Actas submitted to an automatic optical character recognition system (ReadIRIS was mentioned in one TSE story about the vote counting system) or are the tallies entered by someone reading and entering the values for each candidate?

In either case, the vote total listed for Nasralla on the TSE website is only 3 votes, not the 103 votes listed on the tally sheet.

We are not alleging any mischief here (although that's possible). Rather, this is precisely the kind of sloppiness the OAS audit of the software used led us to expect.

This Acta should have failed the software confidence checks (because the number of votes in the tallies does not match the number of votes allegedly cast in this MER). But it either wasn't flagged by the system supposed to catch such inconsistencies (it should have detected as an under vote), or else a human intervened and OK'd the result: human error.

In either case the erroneous numbers were submitted to the vote tallying system with these inconsistencies and were tallied, giving Salvador Nasralla of the PAC party 100 fewer votes than he actually received from this mesa.

These are all officially approved tallies, officially approved errors, not the Actas sequestered for inconsistencies. An Acta does not appear on the website if it hasn't been included in the vote totals, so the TSE thinks there's no problem with this one.

We beg to differ. 

This is just a single example of the kinds of errors we are seeing in the vote totals publicly provided by the TSE.  The sad part is that it is not unique. There are many similar kinds of errors visible in the Actas posted on the TSE website.

The software audit by the OAS said the vote totaling system did not meet international standards for such systems and needed a lot more work (and a reimplementation) to do so.  It looks like the TSE went ahead and used this poor quality software, which would mean it should independently audit all of the Actas and vote totals for consistency and sanity (meaning, are the numbers reported consistent with the number of voters in a specific mesa) before declaring anyone a winner.

Other errors that were apparent earlier are now systematically being corrected, so it will not surprise me if by the time this blog entry is published, the errors I know about (including the one above) have been made to disappear.

But it is these kinds of failings, and silent corrections without acknowledging the failings, that reduce public confidence in the TSE and its official results, leading people like Salvador Nasralla and Manuel Zelaya Rosales, ask for a public, open, recount of the official Actas before the TSE declares a winner.

A public recount of the Actas would go a long way to providing confidence that everyone is adding up the same numbers to get the same vote totals, which frankly would improve public perception of the TSE.

Without that, no matter how many international observers say the process on Sunday was legitimate, there will remain large segments of the Honduran people who believe that the process after Sunday was not.