TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS.- National Electoral Council (CNE) started until last night to open the suitcases of the first departments that arrived from the three parties in the fight with the commitment to provide results starting with March 16th.
The Secretary General of the collegiate body, Alejandro Martinez, reported that until last night they entered the warehouses at National Institute of Vocational Training (Infop) one hundred percent of the material from Francisco Morazán, Islas de la Bahía, two municipalities in El Paraíso and two in Comayagua.
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At night they were waiting for the arrival of the rest of the cities of Comayagua and the trucks with the other documents from El Paraíso, Lempira, Intibucá, La Paz, Colón, Copán, Ocotepeque, Santa Bárbara, Choluteca and Valle were already on their way.
“We will start at 9:00 at night to open (open) the suitcases and take out the electoral documents, once we have more records, we will proceed to scan and then touch,” Martínez said.
“Tomorrow (today) will be a harder day, because we will already have a large number of recordings that we are going to digitize,” said the official, who was always willing to speak to the press.
The scan will be simultaneous
The initial closing report with the results of each of the 23,880 tables corresponding to the three parties (national, liberal and free) will be scanned and digitized simultaneously, so that each political institute has information about the three elective levels.
The process of arriving at an electoral suitcase takes time, because it first passes into the hands of the municipal commissions that receive them from villages and hamlets.
Subsequently, they are delivered to the departmental electoral commissions and they are sent to the Armed Forces (Armed Forces) which, in coordination with the transport custodians, bring them to the capital’s warehouses.
Once in the capital, you have to take turns to unload and then open the suitcase, look for the original closing document, which remains in the possession of CNE, and the copies that must come for each move.
In the case of the National Party, there are two copies for its currents, three for the Liberal Party and ten for the Free Party.
“When we start scanning the minutes, we will go with the three levels and the three political parties to be correct in the information that will be revealed,” said the secretary general of the collegiate body.
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results
If the scanning and digitization of recordings started at midnight, the first results would be available to the public today in the early hours of the morning.
If digitization started later, “we believe that tomorrow (today) afternoon and the day after tomorrow there will be a trend for the three political parties and we will have candidates who will emerge as winners,” the official said.
Martínez estimated that between Thursday and Friday of this week, CNE will be scanned and digitized one hundred percent of the 23,880 minutes, with a rate of 7,960 for each game in dispute.
Access to information
Political parties and their currents each have a computer room installed, in the case of national and liberal parties, in the Plaza Hotel Juan Carlos and Libre in Honduras Maya.
Each party will be able to see the movement of the minutes on the giant screens installed in these hotel centers.
CNE will also disseminate the results through its website and through the bulletins that its president announced on Sunday evening. Sala Ana Paola.
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Arrears after deposit
One of the reasons why the election governing body was late in starting the suitcases was because they gave it an extended warehouse until yesterday, which it built.
It happens that the same suitcases are used in the general election and since there are 14 parties to participate, it was necessary to buy suitcases 50 percent larger than the current ones.
This change brought as a consequence that it does not fit in the previous space and therefore a new one was built, explained the general secretary of CNE.
For political analyst Julio Navarro, there is one aspect that must be recognized in this electoral process: the influx of voters.
Despite the pandemic, people have responded and can be said to have saved the process after its development has long been questioned.
Another analyst, Josué Murillo, pointed out the massive presence of young people who go to the polls not so much because of political banners but because of their beliefs.
Short-term challenges
Politicians should resume discussion on the new electoral law with clear rules as soon as possible in order to avoid problems in the general election.
According to experts, if the elections next November will take place without an efficient transmission system and if the interference of the parties in the National Electoral Council (CNE) continues, the situation will be complicated.
There must be a legal body to regulate the integration of the electoral charts, which for the time being is the issue that has hindered the progress of the law, of which over 200 articles have already been approved.
“Today it is a definite imperative to have clear rules for conducting general elections and not to run away at the last minute, doing it at a horse slaughterhouse, improvising,” suggested the coordinator of the National Convergence Forum (Fonac), Omar Rivera .
In his turn, Augusto Aguilar, who contributed to the preparation of the new electoral law, said that “it is urgent to continue immediately with its approval and with the law of the Electoral Court of Justice”.
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Meanwhile, the National Electoral Council (CNE) “needs to improve in planning the process and what we should expect for the general election is that there are three basic issues resolved,” said Luis León, director of the Dutch Institute for Democracy.
He stated: “We cannot go to a general process without the transmission of data and the counting of votes, because it would be catastrophic; You have to make a plan from now on for the logistics distribution ”, because there were many failures, such as the late arrival of the material from the table representatives.