We now have two separate statistical analyses of Honduran presidential voting data, and both conclude the same thing: there was something fishy that happened in the middle of vote counting.
To recap: The Economist looked at the percentages of votes that went to the two main candidates before and after the long break by the TSE in posting vote counts.
Before the break, with about 57% of the vote counted, Salvador Nasralla had a 5% lead. After that, the lead steadily declined to the final apparent margin of just over 50,000 votes.
The Economist specifically asked whether the explanation offered by the Partido Nacional-- which claimed that the later votes came from more rural locations more likely to favor their candidate-- could account for the shift. They compared vote counts before and after the break in counting within each municipio.
Rather than being differences between urban and rural places, their analysis compared vote counts within each locality. They found an average shift of 3.8% within the same locality. It didn't matter if the municipio was rural or urban-- they all shifted the same way.
One known difference: votes tallied after the break included a large number that were not scanned and transmitted from the polling places on the day of the election. Instead, these were trucked up to Tegucigalpa and scanned there. Much of the discussion about vote counting has centered on the treatment of these vote tallies, including concerns about some arriving in open, unsecured packages, and the rumor that some were scanned in a hotel (and thus potentially could have had substitutes).
The Economist also drew attention to the unusually high voter turnout reported in the late-counted votes, in particular, from three largely rural departments. This, they note, could reflect a better get-out-the-vote operation-- or ballot box stuffing. Here it is worth remembering that the sign-off on vote tallies is done by credentialed party members, and there has been reported fraud and sale of credentials by smaller parties, in 2013 and 2017,
There matters stood until the release by the OAS today of a report by Georgetown University Professor Irfan Nooruddin. His analysis identifies a point when 68% of the votes were counted where, across different regions, both the turnout level and support for the Partido Nacional increases sharply. Either of these would be unusual; both are very unusual.
Nooruddin uses the reported data to do something that the actual vote counting never did: he simulates what vote counts would have looked like if results had posted randomly. This has been a key problem throughout the process: it is unclear what order the TSE used in its vote counting; it was not statistically random nor selected to be a representative sample. The OAS in its initial report noted that the TSE shifted from counting as votes came in to some unexplained selection process. Nooruddin helps us see if the election would have been less confusing if the voting tallies were counted randomly.
The conclusion of this part of the analysis is that if the votes were accurate, and were counted randomly, the pattern seen could have happened, and not result from tampering.
Nooruddin doesn't stop there-- as he notes, this part of the analysis is only worthwhile if the vote counts were accurate. He continues with tests of this assumption, and finds that the differences between early counted vote tallies and later ones "are large and suspicious".
Every department showed the same pattern of early lead for the Alianza followed by a change in pattern. As in the analysis by The Economist, the universality of this pattern is not easily explained by innocent factors. There is nothing about early vs. late vote tallies that would account for this.
It is as if there were two elections being counted, with precincts in every department changing the same way.
The only way we can imagine to have this result would be if for some reason the TSE did a preliminary sort of actas and deferred counting those most favorable to the National Party until last. Needless to say, that makes no sense.
Nooruddin points out that the shift in turnout in the later-counted tallies would be expected less than one in one thousand times-- statistically a significant difference. He presents an in-depth analysis of the Department of La Paz that shows that even in a department that favored Hernández throughout counting, and has a higher-than-average turnout rate, the later vote tallies increased in both reported turnout and voting for the Partido Nacional. The turnout increase is statistically likely to occur only one time in one thousand. Nooruddin concludes "such a sharp increase in turnout in the same department is unusual".
He writes that these findings are "consistent with a hypothesis of tampering with the vote tallies that were counted last".
So what could have happened?
One way to produce such an effect is good old fashioned ballot box stuffing-- reporting more votes than actually took place, and attributing the extra votes to a preferred candidate. Once the acta was signed, no one went back to double check the voter rolls or ballots. As long as the math on the tallies added up, you could have a voting pool in whatever form you like. This might well be correlated with places where votes weren't transmitted online the day of the election, as the ballot stuffing could happen at many points.
A lot of anxiety around these late vote tallies revolves around whether fake actas were substituted on the way to Tegucigalpa, or even fake images of actas in the TSE database. These, again, would work, and would not produce any contradiction unless the full ballot box was opened and recounted.
Both statistical analyses allow for the possibility this was just a really unusual way votes came in and were counted. But in Honduras, there is little trust in the system and unusual has already translated into illegitimate.
What happens next will determine whether Hondurans can begin to rebuild trust in democratic processes.
Showing posts with label Tribunal Supremo Electoral. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tribunal Supremo Electoral. Show all posts
Sunday, December 17, 2017
OAS calls for new elections in Honduras
Today witnessed a series of press conferences in the contested Honduran election.
Shortly after the OAS Mission said it would be making a statement late today, the Tribunal Supremo Electoral announced its own announcement would be made earlier in the day.
Not surprisingly, given previous statements, the TSE's announcement was their conclusion that the presidential election had been won by Juan Orlando Hernández, of the Partido Nacional. Neither the Partido Liberal nor the Alianza formed by two opposition parties, the Partido Anti-corrupción and LIBRE, have accepted the vote tallies posted by the TSE, alleging a number of different kinds of fraud.
There is also a potential legal issue left unaddressed: whether the candidacy of Hernández was entirely legal. The current president ran for an unprecedented second term under a Honduran constitution that prohibited even talk of re-election, until a Supreme Court he shaped while head of Congress ruled otherwise. The Supreme Court ruling opened the door to re-election. But lawmakers in Honduras did not pass any legislation authorizing re-election. Technically, then, this is not just an unprecedented election outcome: it is one that took place outside any defined legal framework.
Both the European Union and the Organization of American States are on record as seeing the electoral process as problematic. While the EU released a statement today that many read as supporting the TSE's conclusion, the OAS today signaled more reservations, beginning with statements by Secretary General Luis Almagro on Twitter.
These were expanded in the OAS announcement this evening that the Secretary General of the OAS cannot provide certainty about the results of the election. The press release reiterates previous descriptions of the electoral process as "characterized by irregularities and deficiencies" and of "very low technical quality" and "lacking integrity".
The press release continues:
This is followed by the appointment of a commission from the OAS of ex-presidents Jorge Quiroga and Alvaro Colom to "carry out the necessary work for a new electoral process and national democratic reconciliation in Honduras".
The full basis for this position is contained in the OAS mission's report to the Secretary General. It rehearses all the weaknesses in the electoral process. It calls allowing a run for re-election based on a court finding (without implementing legislation in place) a "bad practice...that revived the polarization generated by the coup and political crisis of 2009".
The OAS report also provides a new statistical analysis by Professor Irfan Nooruddin of Georgetown University addressing whether the sharp change in voting patterns noted after a break in counting could be explained in any innocent way.
This retraces some of the terrain covered by an analysis in The Economist that concluded that the shifts in voting seen were very unlikely.
Professor Nooruddin uses additional techniques, and concludes "on the basis of this analysis, I would reject the proposition that the National Party won the election
legitimately."
We will revisit these statistical analyses tomorrow, explaining what they do (and do not) show, and relate those observations to some of the known problems in the conduct of Honduran elections in general, and this one in particular.
For now, though, the question is: will Juan Orlando Hernández accept the OAS recommendation? Or does he think he can ignore the massive resistance to his re-election that has already led to almost two dozen deaths of protesters, and the closure of roads across the country?
Shortly after the OAS Mission said it would be making a statement late today, the Tribunal Supremo Electoral announced its own announcement would be made earlier in the day.
Not surprisingly, given previous statements, the TSE's announcement was their conclusion that the presidential election had been won by Juan Orlando Hernández, of the Partido Nacional. Neither the Partido Liberal nor the Alianza formed by two opposition parties, the Partido Anti-corrupción and LIBRE, have accepted the vote tallies posted by the TSE, alleging a number of different kinds of fraud.
There is also a potential legal issue left unaddressed: whether the candidacy of Hernández was entirely legal. The current president ran for an unprecedented second term under a Honduran constitution that prohibited even talk of re-election, until a Supreme Court he shaped while head of Congress ruled otherwise. The Supreme Court ruling opened the door to re-election. But lawmakers in Honduras did not pass any legislation authorizing re-election. Technically, then, this is not just an unprecedented election outcome: it is one that took place outside any defined legal framework.
Both the European Union and the Organization of American States are on record as seeing the electoral process as problematic. While the EU released a statement today that many read as supporting the TSE's conclusion, the OAS today signaled more reservations, beginning with statements by Secretary General Luis Almagro on Twitter.
These were expanded in the OAS announcement this evening that the Secretary General of the OAS cannot provide certainty about the results of the election. The press release reiterates previous descriptions of the electoral process as "characterized by irregularities and deficiencies" and of "very low technical quality" and "lacking integrity".
The press release continues:
in the face of the impossibility of determining a winner, the only road possible for the winner to be the Honduran people is a new called to general elections, within the strictest respect for the rule of law, with guarantees of a TSE that would enjoy the technical capacity and the confidence of the citizenry and the political parties.
This is followed by the appointment of a commission from the OAS of ex-presidents Jorge Quiroga and Alvaro Colom to "carry out the necessary work for a new electoral process and national democratic reconciliation in Honduras".
The full basis for this position is contained in the OAS mission's report to the Secretary General. It rehearses all the weaknesses in the electoral process. It calls allowing a run for re-election based on a court finding (without implementing legislation in place) a "bad practice...that revived the polarization generated by the coup and political crisis of 2009".
The OAS report also provides a new statistical analysis by Professor Irfan Nooruddin of Georgetown University addressing whether the sharp change in voting patterns noted after a break in counting could be explained in any innocent way.
This retraces some of the terrain covered by an analysis in The Economist that concluded that the shifts in voting seen were very unlikely.
Professor Nooruddin uses additional techniques, and concludes "on the basis of this analysis, I would reject the proposition that the National Party won the election
legitimately."
We will revisit these statistical analyses tomorrow, explaining what they do (and do not) show, and relate those observations to some of the known problems in the conduct of Honduran elections in general, and this one in particular.
For now, though, the question is: will Juan Orlando Hernández accept the OAS recommendation? Or does he think he can ignore the massive resistance to his re-election that has already led to almost two dozen deaths of protesters, and the closure of roads across the country?
Saturday, December 16, 2017
Processing an Acta: Rules and Procedures
Amidst allegations of voting fraud, the Honduran Tribunal Supremo Electoral does itself no favors with its incapacity to explain what it does. For many outside observers, it may be worth reiterating that the TSE does not directly count ballots; even when voting irregularities are charged, they mainly return to and re-examine the summaries of votes at each polling place, or MER.
Even those of us who have been following contested TSE procedures through the last three electoral cycles can get confused about how the TSE processes these vote tally sheets (acta in Spanish). Some confusion about how the political parties obtain actas has been evident in blog posts and other coverage. Although what follows is dense, it is an attempt to make this more transparent.
There are published rules governing how actas are supposed to be generated and transmitted to the TSE. The rules are contained in a document issued by the Tribunal Supremo Electoral on November 21 and published in La Gaceta of November 24, 2017-- just two days before the election. They are titled "Reglamento del Sistema Integrado de Escrutinio y Divulgacion Electoral (SIEDE)" and describe both the hardware and software environment for the processing of vote tally sheets for the three elections held on November 26, 2017.
Here's how it was supposed to work:
First, there is a physical space in a voting center where there are two different kinds of "digitization kits". This is the ATX, the "area of transmission (area de transmisión)".
It contains a tablet kit, consisting of a tablet, a multifunction printer/scanner, and a GSM (cell phone) modem. It also contains the Operador de Mesa Receptora (OMR) kit, consisting of a tablet, multifunction printer/scanner, and 2 GSM modems, one for TIGO and one for CLARO, the two major cell phone providers in Honduras.
Each OMR kit serves up to five MER (polling places). The modems are supposed to be connected to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) over the cell phone provider's data network, terminating in the TSE's computer center.
Each OMR kit is operated by a custodian who is designated and credentialed by the TSE.
On the day of the election, the TSE is supposed to reset its database, and all counts, to zero at 6 am and generate and sign a document that this occurred.
At 7am, the digitization kits are set up in the voting centers. At that time the security envelope containing the login information for that specific kit is opened, and the operator logs in over the VPN to the TSE system to receive encryption keys, security certificates, digital signatures for each MER that that operator will support, and only for those MER.
The operator then generates an "hoja de prueba" that is supposed to show that there are no images of actas stored on the tablet, print it, and sign it, then scan it and send it to the TSE. This process is supposed to shut down the OMR kit, so that it cannot be used until after the voting center closes at 4 pm
At 4 PM, when the voting center closes, the software controls the transmission of the voting tally sheets. Voting tally sheets (actas) are generated at each MER for each of the three levels of election, in this order: Presidential, Congressional, and then Municipal. Actas are signed by representatives of each political parties present at the MER.
Then the President of the MER, along with any members who want to join in, take the vote tally sheets physically to the ATX area inside the voting center.
Once the acta is at the ATX, it is the responsibility of the ATX custodian to wake up the equipment, log in using the TSE supplied credentials, verify the ATX information (department, municipality, voting center, identification number of the ATX, number of the MER).
We can assume that all of this information is contained in the JSON information transmitted to the TSE. We can also guess that this error-prone manual process is responsible for the actas in the TSE system today that have images of the tally sheet for a particular MER, but are filed within the system as if they are the tally for a different MER. This is acknowledging that there is the potential for operator error, which the system is supposed to have safeguards to prevent. Once the information is entered into the tablet, the custodian is supposed to make sure the whole system is working (the procedure to do this is not specified).
Then the OMR custodian scans the actas in the ATX that serves the particular group of MERs.
The software works off a QR code on the acta and verifies it is for a MER assigned to this ATX and OMR kit. Once scanned, the system displays the scan on the tablet for the custodian to verify the quality of the scan, that the information is legible, and that it is correctly scanned with no missing or obscured information. If it is OK, they click a button on the screen to transmit it. If its not OK, they click another button on the screen to rescan the acta.
Transmission occurs between the ATX and a receiving server in the TSE computing center, where it is then replicated to the servers of each of the political parties.
The political parties are responsible for installing a fiber optic network between their server and the TSE network. Each acta replicated is encrypted with a digital signature that guarantees its authenticity, as transmitted by the ATX. The political parties and the TSE verify the digital signature of the acta to validate it.
There is a second check on poll tallies provided for the political parties. Back at the OMR, once an acta is transmitted up to the TSE, the custodian prints enough copies of the acta to give to each party's representative on the MER and stamps of the back of each one a rubber stamp that says it conforms to the original and is signed by the secretary of the MER. This process is repeated for each of the OMR kit's MER for the actas for the Presidential, Congressional, and Municipal elections.
Obviously, if there isn't a party representative at a specific MER, this copy won't be received by the party. In general, when the parties cite their actas, they mean the ones transmitted by the TSE, but they may also have the paper copies.
Once transmission concludes for all actas, the custodian prints a receipt for his/her service as custodian and transmits the log files to the TSE.
Now here's one place where what happens introduces the fear of manipulation: all the actas scanned at the ATX centers are supposed to be scanned a second time in Tegucigalpa when the physical package of electoral materials (maletas in Spanish) arrives. The OAS report noted that some of these arrived without security, already open. Pictures of a truck backing up to a hotel in Tegucigalpa that appeared to show such packages raised the concern about some actas possibly being scanned outside the INFOP facilities. In both situations, there is concern that a substitute acta could have been inserted in place of the one scanned on election day at the ATX center.
The published rules make clear that at INFOP, as the documentation physically arrives, the actas are taken out and scanned a second time, and that those scans go into the TSE computers and are replicated to the party servers.
The scans produced in Tegucigalpa replace original scans transmitted from ATX centers. These scans are clearly done using different procedures with a different way of getting in to the system. INFOP does not use the ATX software. There are no documented security protocols to provide for the authenticity of the INFOP scans in the rules as printed by the government.
We presume that the scanner and software in the INFOP center is different than that used in the ATX centers. The images from scanning at the INFOP center (1) lack the time and date stamp at the top, and (2) don't clearly show the security tape applied to the acta to prevent alteration.
It is notable that the otherwise very specific rules from the TSE do a bunch of hand waving rather than documenting the scanning protocol at the INFOP warehouse. It is only by reading between the lines that we can infer that these scans replace the ATX transmitted scans in the TSE system. A proper software/procedural audit would have questioned why there were no protocols described for this process, but the TSE didn't ask its audit firm, Audisis, for a pre-election audit.
What the published rules make clear is that each political party can receive both a physical certified copy of each acta from its representative on the MER, and a digitally transmitted, encrypted acta image from the ATX, replicated from the TSE receiving server.
Each party also receives a scan of the acta made in the INFOP warehouse as each election package physically arrives back at the TSE warehouse and is opened and scanned.
At no point does the TSE compare each of the scanned images with the paper original and the votes recorded in its computers to validate the results of the election. That simple procedure would detect some kinds of fraud that are suspected or rumored.
Even those of us who have been following contested TSE procedures through the last three electoral cycles can get confused about how the TSE processes these vote tally sheets (acta in Spanish). Some confusion about how the political parties obtain actas has been evident in blog posts and other coverage. Although what follows is dense, it is an attempt to make this more transparent.
There are published rules governing how actas are supposed to be generated and transmitted to the TSE. The rules are contained in a document issued by the Tribunal Supremo Electoral on November 21 and published in La Gaceta of November 24, 2017-- just two days before the election. They are titled "Reglamento del Sistema Integrado de Escrutinio y Divulgacion Electoral (SIEDE)" and describe both the hardware and software environment for the processing of vote tally sheets for the three elections held on November 26, 2017.
Here's how it was supposed to work:
First, there is a physical space in a voting center where there are two different kinds of "digitization kits". This is the ATX, the "area of transmission (area de transmisión)".
It contains a tablet kit, consisting of a tablet, a multifunction printer/scanner, and a GSM (cell phone) modem. It also contains the Operador de Mesa Receptora (OMR) kit, consisting of a tablet, multifunction printer/scanner, and 2 GSM modems, one for TIGO and one for CLARO, the two major cell phone providers in Honduras.
Each OMR kit serves up to five MER (polling places). The modems are supposed to be connected to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) over the cell phone provider's data network, terminating in the TSE's computer center.
Each OMR kit is operated by a custodian who is designated and credentialed by the TSE.
On the day of the election, the TSE is supposed to reset its database, and all counts, to zero at 6 am and generate and sign a document that this occurred.
At 7am, the digitization kits are set up in the voting centers. At that time the security envelope containing the login information for that specific kit is opened, and the operator logs in over the VPN to the TSE system to receive encryption keys, security certificates, digital signatures for each MER that that operator will support, and only for those MER.
The operator then generates an "hoja de prueba" that is supposed to show that there are no images of actas stored on the tablet, print it, and sign it, then scan it and send it to the TSE. This process is supposed to shut down the OMR kit, so that it cannot be used until after the voting center closes at 4 pm
At 4 PM, when the voting center closes, the software controls the transmission of the voting tally sheets. Voting tally sheets (actas) are generated at each MER for each of the three levels of election, in this order: Presidential, Congressional, and then Municipal. Actas are signed by representatives of each political parties present at the MER.
Then the President of the MER, along with any members who want to join in, take the vote tally sheets physically to the ATX area inside the voting center.
Once the acta is at the ATX, it is the responsibility of the ATX custodian to wake up the equipment, log in using the TSE supplied credentials, verify the ATX information (department, municipality, voting center, identification number of the ATX, number of the MER).
We can assume that all of this information is contained in the JSON information transmitted to the TSE. We can also guess that this error-prone manual process is responsible for the actas in the TSE system today that have images of the tally sheet for a particular MER, but are filed within the system as if they are the tally for a different MER. This is acknowledging that there is the potential for operator error, which the system is supposed to have safeguards to prevent. Once the information is entered into the tablet, the custodian is supposed to make sure the whole system is working (the procedure to do this is not specified).
Then the OMR custodian scans the actas in the ATX that serves the particular group of MERs.
The software works off a QR code on the acta and verifies it is for a MER assigned to this ATX and OMR kit. Once scanned, the system displays the scan on the tablet for the custodian to verify the quality of the scan, that the information is legible, and that it is correctly scanned with no missing or obscured information. If it is OK, they click a button on the screen to transmit it. If its not OK, they click another button on the screen to rescan the acta.
Transmission occurs between the ATX and a receiving server in the TSE computing center, where it is then replicated to the servers of each of the political parties.
The political parties are responsible for installing a fiber optic network between their server and the TSE network. Each acta replicated is encrypted with a digital signature that guarantees its authenticity, as transmitted by the ATX. The political parties and the TSE verify the digital signature of the acta to validate it.
There is a second check on poll tallies provided for the political parties. Back at the OMR, once an acta is transmitted up to the TSE, the custodian prints enough copies of the acta to give to each party's representative on the MER and stamps of the back of each one a rubber stamp that says it conforms to the original and is signed by the secretary of the MER. This process is repeated for each of the OMR kit's MER for the actas for the Presidential, Congressional, and Municipal elections.
Obviously, if there isn't a party representative at a specific MER, this copy won't be received by the party. In general, when the parties cite their actas, they mean the ones transmitted by the TSE, but they may also have the paper copies.
Once transmission concludes for all actas, the custodian prints a receipt for his/her service as custodian and transmits the log files to the TSE.
Now here's one place where what happens introduces the fear of manipulation: all the actas scanned at the ATX centers are supposed to be scanned a second time in Tegucigalpa when the physical package of electoral materials (maletas in Spanish) arrives. The OAS report noted that some of these arrived without security, already open. Pictures of a truck backing up to a hotel in Tegucigalpa that appeared to show such packages raised the concern about some actas possibly being scanned outside the INFOP facilities. In both situations, there is concern that a substitute acta could have been inserted in place of the one scanned on election day at the ATX center.
The published rules make clear that at INFOP, as the documentation physically arrives, the actas are taken out and scanned a second time, and that those scans go into the TSE computers and are replicated to the party servers.
The scans produced in Tegucigalpa replace original scans transmitted from ATX centers. These scans are clearly done using different procedures with a different way of getting in to the system. INFOP does not use the ATX software. There are no documented security protocols to provide for the authenticity of the INFOP scans in the rules as printed by the government.
We presume that the scanner and software in the INFOP center is different than that used in the ATX centers. The images from scanning at the INFOP center (1) lack the time and date stamp at the top, and (2) don't clearly show the security tape applied to the acta to prevent alteration.
It is notable that the otherwise very specific rules from the TSE do a bunch of hand waving rather than documenting the scanning protocol at the INFOP warehouse. It is only by reading between the lines that we can infer that these scans replace the ATX transmitted scans in the TSE system. A proper software/procedural audit would have questioned why there were no protocols described for this process, but the TSE didn't ask its audit firm, Audisis, for a pre-election audit.
What the published rules make clear is that each political party can receive both a physical certified copy of each acta from its representative on the MER, and a digitally transmitted, encrypted acta image from the ATX, replicated from the TSE receiving server.
Each party also receives a scan of the acta made in the INFOP warehouse as each election package physically arrives back at the TSE warehouse and is opened and scanned.
At no point does the TSE compare each of the scanned images with the paper original and the votes recorded in its computers to validate the results of the election. That simple procedure would detect some kinds of fraud that are suspected or rumored.
Friday, December 15, 2017
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.
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:
Here's how the same acta appears in the TSE system today:
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.
Monday, December 4, 2017
Analyses support doubts about vote and OAS disclaims results while police refuse to stop protests
Our headline may seem to juxtapose three unrelated things. But we think they have to be seen together. And actually, there's one more thing... and it's a doozy.
To recap where the process stands: the TSE resumed counting vote tallies without representatives of the other parties. At the end, it says its count shows the incumbent president with a lead of around 55,000 votes. According to the TSE, the next step is for the parties to register challenges and petitions, within 10 days, and then within 20 days the TSE will certify an outcome to the election.
(In reporting this story, the Voice of America slipped up, describing Juan Orlando Hernández as "U.S.-backed"; the US doesn't normally take sides in a foreign election.)
No one who has watched the situation unfold can be completely satisfied that the vote count has been transparent or without problems. Unexplained prolonged delays in posting numbers, computer crashes that received different explanations at different times, and above all, the weird behavior of the numbers before and after the more than day-long delay, have Hondurans and international observers alike worried.
The OAS actually went so far in its preliminary report to conclude that "the tight margin of the results, and the irregularities, errors and systemic problems that have surrounded this election do not allow the Mission to have certainty about the results".
In the body of the report, the OAS expresses concerns about the vote counting process, noting some ballot boxes arrived open, missing documents, or without security. They also write that after initially counting ballots as they arrived, at some point the TSE "altered the order" to use "criteria that were not explained". So the vote counting switched from non-selective, to selective-- but we don't know what criteria were used to select votes to count.
The OAS concluded that the only route out would be for the main candidates to negotiate an agreement to review the 1000+ poll tallies that were scrutinized for inconsistencies, as well as recount the 5000+ tallies counted after the initial phase of vote counting, when the trend changed, as well as do a complete recount of three departments (Lempira, La Paz, and Intibuca), rural states that had exaggeratedly high reported voter turnout. That is a complete endorsement of the position of the Alianza.
Independently, The Economist, which previously published an article about a tape they received apparently showing training of National Party operatives in ways to cheat, undertook a statistical analysis that gives support to Alianza complaints that the change in voting trends after the break in counting is statistically improbable.
And that brings us to today's amazing development: the police across Honduras, including the US supported militarized policing units, standing down and returning to their bases, refusing to follow the orders they received to stop protests. Under the state of exception declared by Juan Orlando Hernández, free circulation in the country was limited, a night time curfew was declared, and the armed forces and police were directed to remove protesters. What followed was violence, including deadly violence.
Announcing their stand-down, the national police spokesman said "“We want peace, and we will not follow government orders – we’re tired of this".
When a sitting president who has concentrated power loses the ability to command the police, it is a signal of loss of control over the forces necessary to maintain dominance. Even if the TSE were to declare him the winner, it is not clear how governable Honduras would be for a president who took advantage of a somewhat ambiguous court ruling to seek a deeply unpopular second term in office.
After the 2013 election, when Hernández received only 37% of the vote, the three parties that split the majority of the presidential votes did not cooperate as a concerted opposition. This time around, two of those parties entered an alliance and ran an agreed on presidential candidate. This time, the Liberal Party candidate who trailed in the polls has been vocal in saying his review of the poll tallies says the Alianza won, and has supported their calls for a recount, even a full 100% recount if needed.
And here's the extra bit: according to a Honduran lawyer, whose twitter profile says she is a Liberal Party member, election law actually demands a recount of some votes already.
This isn't because of the uncertainties about counting the poll tallies that are already being debated.
It's because the margin between candidates is less than the number of null votes. Null votes are those marked as invalid at the polling place, and thus not included in the totals on the poll tallies from which the central electoral authorities work.
The law appears to require reviewing the null votes from the original ballots, if there are more of them than the margin between candidates. With around 55,000 votes officially between the two candidates, the number of votes marked null at the polling places is 135,000.
The TSE is unlikely to do any of this. Unfortunately, we doubt Hernández will risk the victory he went so far to gain and agree to the kind of recount and scrutiny of the counting process that is being called for by the Alianza, the Liberal Party-- and the OAS.
Until the army stands down and returns to its barracks. Unlikely, yes. But stranger things seem to be happening...
To recap where the process stands: the TSE resumed counting vote tallies without representatives of the other parties. At the end, it says its count shows the incumbent president with a lead of around 55,000 votes. According to the TSE, the next step is for the parties to register challenges and petitions, within 10 days, and then within 20 days the TSE will certify an outcome to the election.
(In reporting this story, the Voice of America slipped up, describing Juan Orlando Hernández as "U.S.-backed"; the US doesn't normally take sides in a foreign election.)
No one who has watched the situation unfold can be completely satisfied that the vote count has been transparent or without problems. Unexplained prolonged delays in posting numbers, computer crashes that received different explanations at different times, and above all, the weird behavior of the numbers before and after the more than day-long delay, have Hondurans and international observers alike worried.
The OAS actually went so far in its preliminary report to conclude that "the tight margin of the results, and the irregularities, errors and systemic problems that have surrounded this election do not allow the Mission to have certainty about the results".
In the body of the report, the OAS expresses concerns about the vote counting process, noting some ballot boxes arrived open, missing documents, or without security. They also write that after initially counting ballots as they arrived, at some point the TSE "altered the order" to use "criteria that were not explained". So the vote counting switched from non-selective, to selective-- but we don't know what criteria were used to select votes to count.
The OAS concluded that the only route out would be for the main candidates to negotiate an agreement to review the 1000+ poll tallies that were scrutinized for inconsistencies, as well as recount the 5000+ tallies counted after the initial phase of vote counting, when the trend changed, as well as do a complete recount of three departments (Lempira, La Paz, and Intibuca), rural states that had exaggeratedly high reported voter turnout. That is a complete endorsement of the position of the Alianza.
Independently, The Economist, which previously published an article about a tape they received apparently showing training of National Party operatives in ways to cheat, undertook a statistical analysis that gives support to Alianza complaints that the change in voting trends after the break in counting is statistically improbable.
And that brings us to today's amazing development: the police across Honduras, including the US supported militarized policing units, standing down and returning to their bases, refusing to follow the orders they received to stop protests. Under the state of exception declared by Juan Orlando Hernández, free circulation in the country was limited, a night time curfew was declared, and the armed forces and police were directed to remove protesters. What followed was violence, including deadly violence.
Announcing their stand-down, the national police spokesman said "“We want peace, and we will not follow government orders – we’re tired of this".
When a sitting president who has concentrated power loses the ability to command the police, it is a signal of loss of control over the forces necessary to maintain dominance. Even if the TSE were to declare him the winner, it is not clear how governable Honduras would be for a president who took advantage of a somewhat ambiguous court ruling to seek a deeply unpopular second term in office.
After the 2013 election, when Hernández received only 37% of the vote, the three parties that split the majority of the presidential votes did not cooperate as a concerted opposition. This time around, two of those parties entered an alliance and ran an agreed on presidential candidate. This time, the Liberal Party candidate who trailed in the polls has been vocal in saying his review of the poll tallies says the Alianza won, and has supported their calls for a recount, even a full 100% recount if needed.
And here's the extra bit: according to a Honduran lawyer, whose twitter profile says she is a Liberal Party member, election law actually demands a recount of some votes already.
This isn't because of the uncertainties about counting the poll tallies that are already being debated.
It's because the margin between candidates is less than the number of null votes. Null votes are those marked as invalid at the polling place, and thus not included in the totals on the poll tallies from which the central electoral authorities work.
The law appears to require reviewing the null votes from the original ballots, if there are more of them than the margin between candidates. With around 55,000 votes officially between the two candidates, the number of votes marked null at the polling places is 135,000.
The TSE is unlikely to do any of this. Unfortunately, we doubt Hernández will risk the victory he went so far to gain and agree to the kind of recount and scrutiny of the counting process that is being called for by the Alianza, the Liberal Party-- and the OAS.
Until the army stands down and returns to its barracks. Unlikely, yes. But stranger things seem to be happening...
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Controversy about votes being "monitored"
UPDATED to add Santa Barbara and Cortes to list of departments where votes held for "monitoreo" favored the Alianza; and to note that the TSE has said it will count all votes, something we are seeing happen as we go through our list of tallies in monitoreo.
Today. reports from Honduras indicated that the Tribunal Supremo Electoral was holding about 300,000 uncounted votes in a state of "monitoreo". They offered no explanation why. What was expressed was that these votes would not be counted before a winner was named in the now extremely tight contest between Juan Orlando Hernández and Salvador Nasralla.
This alarmed international observers, who observed-- quite rightly-- that this many uncounted votes could well swing such a tight election. Both the OAS and the European Union publicly called on the TSE to count all the votes before designating a victor.
Remarkably, this call was echoed by COHEP, the Honduran council of private enterprise.
The EU in particular urged the TSE to take the time to count the votes, so that every vote was recognized, rather than hurry to end the election prematurely. UPDATE: as of 10 PM Tegucigalpa time, the TSE has said it will count all votes; and we are seeing the status change as we go through our list.
We decided to review the vote tallies that are being held for greater scrutiny-- or monitoreo-- ourselves, to see if the suspicion many have, that this includes a preponderance of pro-Alianza voting, was upheld.
It may take us a few hours. So far, though, in the Departments of Atlantida, Colon, Cortes, Santa Barbara, Valle and Yoro, the total of votes on these uncounted tallies for the Alianza is higher than the total for the National Party. (We are suspending this project at 1 AM Tegucigalpa time, as the TSE continues to update some of these. We will spot check other departments tomorrow...)
There may be reasons these tallies require extra scrutiny. There are check sum features built into the tallies, so errors in transcription or uncertainties about numerals can be resolved in many cases. In others, the question would be if, for example, over-writing on one line should result in ignoring the votes for other candidates.
So far, though, it is clear that this vote pool reserved from counting would contribute to shifting the margin back in the other direction.
Today. reports from Honduras indicated that the Tribunal Supremo Electoral was holding about 300,000 uncounted votes in a state of "monitoreo". They offered no explanation why. What was expressed was that these votes would not be counted before a winner was named in the now extremely tight contest between Juan Orlando Hernández and Salvador Nasralla.
This alarmed international observers, who observed-- quite rightly-- that this many uncounted votes could well swing such a tight election. Both the OAS and the European Union publicly called on the TSE to count all the votes before designating a victor.
Remarkably, this call was echoed by COHEP, the Honduran council of private enterprise.
The EU in particular urged the TSE to take the time to count the votes, so that every vote was recognized, rather than hurry to end the election prematurely. UPDATE: as of 10 PM Tegucigalpa time, the TSE has said it will count all votes; and we are seeing the status change as we go through our list.
We decided to review the vote tallies that are being held for greater scrutiny-- or monitoreo-- ourselves, to see if the suspicion many have, that this includes a preponderance of pro-Alianza voting, was upheld.
It may take us a few hours. So far, though, in the Departments of Atlantida, Colon, Cortes, Santa Barbara, Valle and Yoro, the total of votes on these uncounted tallies for the Alianza is higher than the total for the National Party. (We are suspending this project at 1 AM Tegucigalpa time, as the TSE continues to update some of these. We will spot check other departments tomorrow...)
There may be reasons these tallies require extra scrutiny. There are check sum features built into the tallies, so errors in transcription or uncertainties about numerals can be resolved in many cases. In others, the question would be if, for example, over-writing on one line should result in ignoring the votes for other candidates.
So far, though, it is clear that this vote pool reserved from counting would contribute to shifting the margin back in the other direction.
Election update: four days since polling ended
Yesterday the Tribunal Supremo Electoral said it would make an announcement of final vote count at 3 AM local time Thursday.
One assumes that was a projection based on the pace of counting, not (just) a way to try to avoid having people awake and paying attention. We did not set an alarm, which is just as well, since nothing was announced at 3 AM.
In part, that may be due to an as-yet incompletely explained event that affected the computer equipment Wednesday evening. This took the entire TSE system down with about 82% of the votes counted-- just after the vote had swung slightly to favor Hernández.
The explanation offered by David Matamoros, head of the electoral tribunal, was that this was a computer breakdown, due to the high volume of data being too much for the system used, requiring additional servers to come online. Continuing a pattern of uncertainty and confusion stemming from the Tribunal, another tribunal member, Marco Ramiro Lobo, was quoted as saying the system had been "hacked".
Regardless of the actual cause, the break in the technology came at an unfortunate point in the process. Moments before, an agreement (since repudiated) was released, brokered by the OAS, in which the two candidates agreed to accept the numbers that the TSE was supposed to be reporting in the early morning.
At 8 AM Thursday, Tegucigalpa time, the count is still stalled at just under 89%.
The vote count posted favors Juan Orlando Hernández by 23,000, out of a total of 2.92 million votes-- less than 1% difference.
Due to the procedures used by the electoral tribunal, it is impossible to be certain which polling places have yet to be tabulated. Where the 11% of votes still outstanding comes from is critical, because of the sharp differences in vote preference from region to region.
For example, in the Department of Cortes, where Salvador Nasralla has won 56% of the 404,000 votes counted, we can compare to the 2013 results, which showed a total of 516,000 voters. The possibility of there being more than 100,000 votes still uncounted from this region could be enough to shift the totals, if the current 56%/32% split of vote there continued, as that would be a 24,000 vote advantage for Nasralla.
This won't be settled until every vote has been counted. As the slow process drips on, Honduran citizens continue to have their trust in democratic institutions eroded.
And it appears that the almost inevitable round of repression of protest has also begun, with twitter reporting (and photos confirming) the militarized police or military tear-gassing protesters assembled outside the location of the counting in Tegucigalpa last evening.
It could be easy to lose sight of one clear lesson in this election: even if the incumbent president somehow holds on for a second term, against the popular rejection of presidential re-election seen in pre-election opinion surveys, the opposition campaign mobilized a far larger group of voters than international observers expected.
They maintained the level of support seen in the 2013 election, when it was split between the component Partido Anti-corrupción and LIBRE parties that make up the present Alianza, thus allowing Hernández to win with only 37% of the 2013 vote.
Whether denied office this year or not, the Alianza should be a political force to reckon with over the next four years, representing as many Honduran voters as the Partido Nacional, inheriting the role long played by the now diminished Partido Liberal as the counter to that political force.
One assumes that was a projection based on the pace of counting, not (just) a way to try to avoid having people awake and paying attention. We did not set an alarm, which is just as well, since nothing was announced at 3 AM.
In part, that may be due to an as-yet incompletely explained event that affected the computer equipment Wednesday evening. This took the entire TSE system down with about 82% of the votes counted-- just after the vote had swung slightly to favor Hernández.
The explanation offered by David Matamoros, head of the electoral tribunal, was that this was a computer breakdown, due to the high volume of data being too much for the system used, requiring additional servers to come online. Continuing a pattern of uncertainty and confusion stemming from the Tribunal, another tribunal member, Marco Ramiro Lobo, was quoted as saying the system had been "hacked".
Regardless of the actual cause, the break in the technology came at an unfortunate point in the process. Moments before, an agreement (since repudiated) was released, brokered by the OAS, in which the two candidates agreed to accept the numbers that the TSE was supposed to be reporting in the early morning.
At 8 AM Thursday, Tegucigalpa time, the count is still stalled at just under 89%.
The vote count posted favors Juan Orlando Hernández by 23,000, out of a total of 2.92 million votes-- less than 1% difference.
Due to the procedures used by the electoral tribunal, it is impossible to be certain which polling places have yet to be tabulated. Where the 11% of votes still outstanding comes from is critical, because of the sharp differences in vote preference from region to region.
For example, in the Department of Cortes, where Salvador Nasralla has won 56% of the 404,000 votes counted, we can compare to the 2013 results, which showed a total of 516,000 voters. The possibility of there being more than 100,000 votes still uncounted from this region could be enough to shift the totals, if the current 56%/32% split of vote there continued, as that would be a 24,000 vote advantage for Nasralla.
This won't be settled until every vote has been counted. As the slow process drips on, Honduran citizens continue to have their trust in democratic institutions eroded.
And it appears that the almost inevitable round of repression of protest has also begun, with twitter reporting (and photos confirming) the militarized police or military tear-gassing protesters assembled outside the location of the counting in Tegucigalpa last evening.
It could be easy to lose sight of one clear lesson in this election: even if the incumbent president somehow holds on for a second term, against the popular rejection of presidential re-election seen in pre-election opinion surveys, the opposition campaign mobilized a far larger group of voters than international observers expected.
They maintained the level of support seen in the 2013 election, when it was split between the component Partido Anti-corrupción and LIBRE parties that make up the present Alianza, thus allowing Hernández to win with only 37% of the 2013 vote.
Whether denied office this year or not, the Alianza should be a political force to reckon with over the next four years, representing as many Honduran voters as the Partido Nacional, inheriting the role long played by the now diminished Partido Liberal as the counter to that political force.
Monday, November 27, 2017
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":
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).
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:
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.
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.
“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.
What may be coming in the Honduran election
Honduras' Proceso Digital has a story today based on an interview with a member of the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE), Marco Ramiro Lobo. The headline says it all: "La tendencia presidencial se mantiene".
The presidential projection is staying the same.
Salvador Nasralla of the Alianza, the founder of the Partido Anti-corrupción, is maintaining a lead of 45.17% to 40.21% over the sitting president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who pushed his Partido Nacional into an unprecedented and unpopular campaign for re-election.
Early this morning, the TSE reported tabulated votes for about 1,992,128 voters, of which about 95% were valid.
Ramiro Lobo confirms what has been reported based on the information given to the Alianza (and other parties) by the TSE: the vote count is complete for the major cities, which on-the ground reports say all went for Nasralla.
This raises the question-- with the majority of the votes counted, what, if anything, might change the current projection?
First in the fears of many Hondurans is corruption in vote counting, either locally or nationally.
The TSE counts votes from each individual mesa electoral, or polling place (MER). The ballots are counted at the polling place, and a report, called an acta, is sent to the TSE, along with the sealed ballot box, which allows for checking the count made originally.
This transmission chain introduces multiple points where people feared voting fraud could take place.
In the 2013 election, suspected fraud ranged from, at the local level, not counting votes that were actually cast; to changing the numbers transmitted to the TSE; to the infamous and clearly demonstrated pattern of "over-voting", where in a few districts, a much higher turnout was reported-- sometimes more than 100% of the registered voters.
Each MER is supposed to have the same number of potential voters. If more voters turn out in some polling places, the proportion of votes theoretically could diverge from the national tendency. This happened in 2013, and the over votes went largely to the National Party candidate, Juan Orlando Hernández.
This suspicious pattern was detected in 2013 by a distributed social media campaign to recalculate the totals from the published actas (an effort in which we participated).
This time around, the TSE did not publish those documents right away. But it did share them with the political parties. The Alianza set up its own recount process in anticipation of similar problems. It has not yet reported any.
The fact that the Alianza counts and those later confirmed by the TSE agree goes a long way to assuring that outright vote alteration is not happening after the actas reach Tegucigalpa.
So we have a couple of other possibilities to consider. First, the TSE said last night that it is still waiting for delivery of the sealed ballot boxes and counts from some places. These would by definition be from remote locations. They could, in theory, have different political views than the urban population.
But it would take an enormous swing towards Hernández to shift a 5% lead with only 40% of the vote still to count. And in the vote totals from more rural places posted by the TSE so far, this does not seem to be happening.
With the major cities already reported, the polling places not yet counted must be from the primarily rural areas of the country-- the northeast coast, inland Olancho, and southwest Lenca region. There are a few ways that this vote might shift the picture, but all of them seem unlikely, and the evidence available doesn't support expecting them to radically alter the pattern that has emerged.
First, Ramiro Lobo said explicitly that as the TSE is continuing its count, the original tendency established based on about 10,000 actas is being maintained.
Ramiro Lobo's statement to the press seems to be primarily to counter questions raised about why it took the TSE until 2 AM to report preliminary results. He says that when they counted the first 1500 actas, they had a statistical tie, so they kept counting until the difference was 5% and kept staying the same.
In other words, the TSE doesn't expect things to change, and is not seeing changes as it continues to count the remaining actas, including those from more rural locations.
Even Juan Orlando Hernández, while still claiming his own information has him 7 points ahead of Nasralla, has now shifted from citing exit polling (done by a firm controlled by a former member of his government) to emphasizing that the TSE "recognizes" that its count is not "conclusive".
His statements may point to what he is hoping will change what seems like an inevitable loss. He is quoted as counter-factually claimed that the TSE had only counted 20% of the vote, when they reported having counted 59% of the vote. The comments reported have him claiming the pro-Nasralla counts reflect only votes from the two main cities (San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa). His hopes, it would seem, are tied to the country-side.
Unfortunately for these hopes, his math makes no sense.
The population of the top 20 Honduran cities in 2017 was 2,236,731. These top 20 cities only make up about 25% of the population of Honduras. With 59% of the vote counted by the TSE, that should mean that about 34% of the rural districts have already been counted-- and again, as Ramiro Lobo notes, continued counting is not changing the pattern.
So could it be that there is a specific rural area where Hernández is expecting either a higher turnout (over-voting, like the pattern that benefited him in 2013), or a radically higher proportion of the vote to go his way?
The posted data from the TSE show his highest support coming in the rural departments of the southwest part of the country. In Lempira, he currently holds a 58% to 33% advantage, and in Intibuca, a 52% to 30% advantage.
But the absolute number of voters in these departments is small-- a total of 47,000 reported from Lempira, and 37,000 from Intibuca. And by all accounts, this is where he can be expected to do best, as a native son.
In scenarios we have tried out, Hernández would need to have high over-voting in all remaining districts and have them vote on the lines of his core constituency to pull out a win so narrow it would be a statistical tie.
Other rural areas that the TSE is reporting already depart from any winning model. In Olancho, with 96,000 votes counted, the Alianza is ahead with 45% of the vote to the Partido Nacional's 44%. In Gracias a Dios, the vast eastern department, only 835 votes have been counted, with the Alianza and Partido Nacional each receiving about 33% of the vote. For Hernández, tying in the rural portions of Honduras is simply not enough to win.
Thus we come to our final observations about what may be coming in this election.
First, with the collapse of any opposition in the Honduran print press, the role of social media has increase dramatically,
On Twitter, get out the vote efforts were undertaken by Alianza supporters as "Operation Cusuco".
An independent collective of community media calling itself "Guancasco de Medios" also used Twitter to consolidate and share electoral information.
The imagery in both cases is fundamentally Honduran: cusuco is the local name for the armadillo, whose tenacity in digging in is legendary-- like hunting a cusuco, participants went to the houses of those who might not have otherwise come out to vote. The guancasco is the ancient Lenca practice of inter-community visits accompanied by ceremonies, through which peer to peer politics were transacted.
Poll watchers for the Alianza also used Twitter, to report vote totals they recorded as they concluded their work. This kind of publishing of vote totals, while unofficial, helps limit how the final official count could change-- or at the very least, would require justifications that the TSE does not, remarkably, seem inclined to even propose.
There is no reason to simply accept the claims by TSE officials to be disinterested stewards of the franchise. But there is every reason to see them as unwilling to take political heat when emerging voting patterns already circulating did not support the claims made by the sitting president.
Finally, the organization of poll watchers and national and international observers has to have changed the atmosphere. There are reports of violence against political activists, and international observers have not necessarily been welcomed.
But along with the role of social media, the presence of poll watchers and international and national observers has made it harder for real fraud to be carried out-- at least as reflected in results so far.
The presidential projection is staying the same.
Salvador Nasralla of the Alianza, the founder of the Partido Anti-corrupción, is maintaining a lead of 45.17% to 40.21% over the sitting president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who pushed his Partido Nacional into an unprecedented and unpopular campaign for re-election.
Early this morning, the TSE reported tabulated votes for about 1,992,128 voters, of which about 95% were valid.
Ramiro Lobo confirms what has been reported based on the information given to the Alianza (and other parties) by the TSE: the vote count is complete for the major cities, which on-the ground reports say all went for Nasralla.
This raises the question-- with the majority of the votes counted, what, if anything, might change the current projection?
First in the fears of many Hondurans is corruption in vote counting, either locally or nationally.
The TSE counts votes from each individual mesa electoral, or polling place (MER). The ballots are counted at the polling place, and a report, called an acta, is sent to the TSE, along with the sealed ballot box, which allows for checking the count made originally.
This transmission chain introduces multiple points where people feared voting fraud could take place.
In the 2013 election, suspected fraud ranged from, at the local level, not counting votes that were actually cast; to changing the numbers transmitted to the TSE; to the infamous and clearly demonstrated pattern of "over-voting", where in a few districts, a much higher turnout was reported-- sometimes more than 100% of the registered voters.
Each MER is supposed to have the same number of potential voters. If more voters turn out in some polling places, the proportion of votes theoretically could diverge from the national tendency. This happened in 2013, and the over votes went largely to the National Party candidate, Juan Orlando Hernández.
This suspicious pattern was detected in 2013 by a distributed social media campaign to recalculate the totals from the published actas (an effort in which we participated).
This time around, the TSE did not publish those documents right away. But it did share them with the political parties. The Alianza set up its own recount process in anticipation of similar problems. It has not yet reported any.
The fact that the Alianza counts and those later confirmed by the TSE agree goes a long way to assuring that outright vote alteration is not happening after the actas reach Tegucigalpa.
So we have a couple of other possibilities to consider. First, the TSE said last night that it is still waiting for delivery of the sealed ballot boxes and counts from some places. These would by definition be from remote locations. They could, in theory, have different political views than the urban population.
But it would take an enormous swing towards Hernández to shift a 5% lead with only 40% of the vote still to count. And in the vote totals from more rural places posted by the TSE so far, this does not seem to be happening.
With the major cities already reported, the polling places not yet counted must be from the primarily rural areas of the country-- the northeast coast, inland Olancho, and southwest Lenca region. There are a few ways that this vote might shift the picture, but all of them seem unlikely, and the evidence available doesn't support expecting them to radically alter the pattern that has emerged.
First, Ramiro Lobo said explicitly that as the TSE is continuing its count, the original tendency established based on about 10,000 actas is being maintained.
Ramiro Lobo's statement to the press seems to be primarily to counter questions raised about why it took the TSE until 2 AM to report preliminary results. He says that when they counted the first 1500 actas, they had a statistical tie, so they kept counting until the difference was 5% and kept staying the same.
In other words, the TSE doesn't expect things to change, and is not seeing changes as it continues to count the remaining actas, including those from more rural locations.
Even Juan Orlando Hernández, while still claiming his own information has him 7 points ahead of Nasralla, has now shifted from citing exit polling (done by a firm controlled by a former member of his government) to emphasizing that the TSE "recognizes" that its count is not "conclusive".
His statements may point to what he is hoping will change what seems like an inevitable loss. He is quoted as counter-factually claimed that the TSE had only counted 20% of the vote, when they reported having counted 59% of the vote. The comments reported have him claiming the pro-Nasralla counts reflect only votes from the two main cities (San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa). His hopes, it would seem, are tied to the country-side.
Unfortunately for these hopes, his math makes no sense.
The population of the top 20 Honduran cities in 2017 was 2,236,731. These top 20 cities only make up about 25% of the population of Honduras. With 59% of the vote counted by the TSE, that should mean that about 34% of the rural districts have already been counted-- and again, as Ramiro Lobo notes, continued counting is not changing the pattern.
So could it be that there is a specific rural area where Hernández is expecting either a higher turnout (over-voting, like the pattern that benefited him in 2013), or a radically higher proportion of the vote to go his way?
The posted data from the TSE show his highest support coming in the rural departments of the southwest part of the country. In Lempira, he currently holds a 58% to 33% advantage, and in Intibuca, a 52% to 30% advantage.
But the absolute number of voters in these departments is small-- a total of 47,000 reported from Lempira, and 37,000 from Intibuca. And by all accounts, this is where he can be expected to do best, as a native son.
In scenarios we have tried out, Hernández would need to have high over-voting in all remaining districts and have them vote on the lines of his core constituency to pull out a win so narrow it would be a statistical tie.
Other rural areas that the TSE is reporting already depart from any winning model. In Olancho, with 96,000 votes counted, the Alianza is ahead with 45% of the vote to the Partido Nacional's 44%. In Gracias a Dios, the vast eastern department, only 835 votes have been counted, with the Alianza and Partido Nacional each receiving about 33% of the vote. For Hernández, tying in the rural portions of Honduras is simply not enough to win.
Thus we come to our final observations about what may be coming in this election.
First, with the collapse of any opposition in the Honduran print press, the role of social media has increase dramatically,
On Twitter, get out the vote efforts were undertaken by Alianza supporters as "Operation Cusuco".
An independent collective of community media calling itself "Guancasco de Medios" also used Twitter to consolidate and share electoral information.
The imagery in both cases is fundamentally Honduran: cusuco is the local name for the armadillo, whose tenacity in digging in is legendary-- like hunting a cusuco, participants went to the houses of those who might not have otherwise come out to vote. The guancasco is the ancient Lenca practice of inter-community visits accompanied by ceremonies, through which peer to peer politics were transacted.
Poll watchers for the Alianza also used Twitter, to report vote totals they recorded as they concluded their work. This kind of publishing of vote totals, while unofficial, helps limit how the final official count could change-- or at the very least, would require justifications that the TSE does not, remarkably, seem inclined to even propose.
There is no reason to simply accept the claims by TSE officials to be disinterested stewards of the franchise. But there is every reason to see them as unwilling to take political heat when emerging voting patterns already circulating did not support the claims made by the sitting president.
Finally, the organization of poll watchers and national and international observers has to have changed the atmosphere. There are reports of violence against political activists, and international observers have not necessarily been welcomed.
But along with the role of social media, the presence of poll watchers and international and national observers has made it harder for real fraud to be carried out-- at least as reflected in results so far.
The TSE reports... the Alianza is in the lead
It took them until almost 2 in the morning in Honduras, but finally, the TSE has made an official statement.
Not calling the election: they will continue to count votes until they are finished.
But with 59% of the votes counted officially by the TSE, the reported proportion of votes is:
Salvador Nasralla 45.7%
Juan Orlando Hernández 40.21%
A couple of things to note:
The TSE also said it may be Thursday before they get to some of the votes. They have yet to post the vote totals on their website, which will allow us to assess which parts of the country have been counted, and see whether the votes not yet counted could change the outcome.
At the same time, to come out with such a strong and marked difference in favor of Nasralla might suggest that the TSE thinks this pattern is likely to hold up; otherwise, we would expect them to maintain a more cautious approach, perhaps reporting a lower proportion of the counted votes with a tighter field.
The next few days will be tense and it is critical that international observers keep watching.
Not calling the election: they will continue to count votes until they are finished.
But with 59% of the votes counted officially by the TSE, the reported proportion of votes is:
Salvador Nasralla 45.7%
Juan Orlando Hernández 40.21%
A couple of things to note:
The TSE also said it may be Thursday before they get to some of the votes. They have yet to post the vote totals on their website, which will allow us to assess which parts of the country have been counted, and see whether the votes not yet counted could change the outcome.
At the same time, to come out with such a strong and marked difference in favor of Nasralla might suggest that the TSE thinks this pattern is likely to hold up; otherwise, we would expect them to maintain a more cautious approach, perhaps reporting a lower proportion of the counted votes with a tighter field.
The next few days will be tense and it is critical that international observers keep watching.
Sunday, November 26, 2017
With 68% [updated] of the vote counted...
Alianza candidate Salvador Nasralla just held a press conference in which-- drawing on data that parties receive from the TSE-- 78% of the actas (reports of votes from individual districts) have been counted-- and they show him with almost a 5% lead over Juan Orlando Hernández.
NotiBomba has tweeted that the US Embassy is trying to persuade Hernández to concede (not clear what their source would be).
Meanwhile, the TSE itself maintains its silence.
UPDATE: Proceso Digital covered the Nasralla press conference. They quote what he said extensively; here's our translation:
NotiBomba has tweeted that the US Embassy is trying to persuade Hernández to concede (not clear what their source would be).
Meanwhile, the TSE itself maintains its silence.
UPDATE: Proceso Digital covered the Nasralla press conference. They quote what he said extensively; here's our translation:
"It's the first time in history that the Tribunal Supremo Electoral hasn't provided results [by the time he was speaking, midnight], but we have our own computing center and it says that with 68.4% of the actas, that is, 4,259,107 of the 6 million that the Tribunal said could vote, the actas are there”, said Nasralla.
He added that “of those that represent 68.4% of the actas, I have 45.4%, against 40.6% the the current president has, that's a difference of 4.8%, that represents 106,000 votes difference”.
Nasralla explained that two hours ago it said that there was a difference of 30,000 votes and that in the passing of the hours that progressed to 106,000.
“In light of the fact that this tendency has not changed, I can say to you that I am the new president of Honduras. I want to thank those that defended the vote”, he said.
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