source: Center for Economy and Politicall Research
On November 30, Hondurans voted to elect a new president, all 128 members of the legislature, and all local elected officials (mayors, deputy, mayors, and municipal councilors) across the country’s 298 municipalities. Broadly, the election presented voters with the choice of supporting the continuation of President Xiomara Castro’s left-leaning social and economic agenda by voting for Liberty and Refoundation (Libertad y Refundación, or LIBRE) candidates, or opting for the return to a more conservative agenda by voting for candidates from the Liberal Party or the National Party.
The vote took place in a highly polarized climate that also featured egregious instances of US interference — including interventions by President Trump and Republican lawmakers — alongside widespread allegations, by supporters of all three candidates, of plans to manipulate the vote or to subvert a legitimate electoral outcome. In some cases, key aspects of the electoral process, including regulations and technology platforms, were not finalized until hours before the vote. Although troubling reports of voter intimidation surfaced, the most significant technical problems appear to have occurred during the validation of the preliminary results, partly due to significant deficiencies in the optical character recognition software used to scan tally sheets.
Constitutional reforms in 2019 and a new electoral law implemented in 2021 redesigned Honduras’s electoral institutions. These reforms were in part a response to the 2017 elections, which many believed to be marred by fraud that benefited the then-incumbent National Party.1 Under the old system, a single body, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (Tribunal Supremo Electoral, or TSE), was in charge of both organizing elections and ruling on electoral disputes. Because its three judges were appointed by a congress historically dominated by the National and Liberal parties, the tribunal lacked meaningful independence. The reforms abolished the TSE and split its functions between two separate electoral bodies. Each is composed of representatives from the three major parties, allowing for a higher degree of political representation and a broader forum to contest electoral decisions.
This design “broadly provided for democratic elections” in 2021, as the EU’s observation mission stated that year; however, in the 2025 elections, the system’s design generated a high level of contention within the electoral bodies, producing sharp partisan divisions.2 This led to delays in the implementation of key elements of the electoral process and contributed to serious problems in the review and verification of results, as well as in the timing and communication of the official results. Together, these divisions and delays deepened public distrust in both the authorities themselves and the broader electoral process.
In the lead-up to the election, the National and Liberal Party opposition accused LIBRE of using its influence over the government to persecute opposition-aligned electoral officials and of planning to use its leadership in the Honduran Congress to try to alter the results. In turn, LIBRE alleged that the opposition — holding a two-to-one advantage within the electoral bodies and backed by powerful allies in influential economic sectors — intended to orchestrate fraudulent interference in the balloting process. LIBRE also expressed concern that the electoral authorities might prematurely declare a winner without conclusive results.
On election night, Honduras’s electoral authority, the National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral, or CNE), reported early results from the Preliminary Results Transmission System (Sistema de Transmisión de Resultados Electorales Preliminares, or TREP). They indicated that the incumbent LIBRE Party had lost the presidential election by a wide, unrecoverable margin, while the two opposition parties were in a dead heat, with the National Party showing an extremely narrow lead. That night, alongside the first publication of the preliminary results, the LIBRE Party’s presidential candidate, Rixi Moncada, held a press conference alleging irregularities in the voting data and asserting that LIBRE would demand a full review of all ballots. Weeks later, the CNE — which is composed of representatives from each of the three major parties — officially declared Nasry “Tito” Asfura president-elect on December 24, in the absence of the LIBRE-affiliated councilor and before fully completing a special scrutiny process of irregular ballots, which previously the CNE had unanimously agreed to carry out.
CEPR’s Electoral Observation Mission
CEPR deployed a three-person accredited electoral observation mission to Tegucigalpa: CEPR Senior International Policy Associate Francesca Emanuele, CEPR Research Associate Pedro Labayen Herrera, and Annie Bird, a leading Honduras expert and human rights advocate. The team was on the ground from November 27 until December 11 and focused its observation efforts primarily on the presidential election. In the lead-up to election day, the mission met with various actors — including civil society and human rights organizations; journalists; analysts; other electoral observation missions; senior party officials from the LIBRE, National, and Liberal parties; two of the CNE’s three councilors and other electoral authorities; and ministers in the Castro administration — to better understand the context and the concerns of the stakeholders involved.
CEPR was granted access to the preliminary results as they became available through the CNE’s central repository of tally sheets and data, which was set up for electoral observation missions and journalists. This access allowed the mission to employ the assistance of CEPR economist David Rosnick, who has extensive experience in the analysis of electoral data to track results and perform internal projections. However, CEPR experienced difficulties in obtaining timely access to the data. Although authorization had been granted, the central repository interface was not activated until just hours before the start of election day, highlighting the CNE’s delay in establishing clear and timely procedures for data sharing.
These elections were the most observed in Honduran history, according to CNE Councilor Marlon Ochoa.3 In addition to CEPR, there were at least 43 national and 24 international accredited electoral observation missions.4 These included delegations from the Organization of American States 5(OAS) and the European Union,6 composed of more than 100 and more than 80 observers, respectively. The Network for the Defense of Democracy — a coalition of several civil society organizations including the Association for a More Just Society, the Honduran Private Enterprise Council (Consejo Hondureño de la Empresa Privada, or COHEP), and the National Anticorruption Council — deployed more than 12,000 national and international observers across the country.7 In a separate joint mission,8 the Center for the Study of Democracy (CESPAD), Global Exchange, and the Honduran Solidarity Network deployed 96 domestic observers and 44 international observers.9
Assessment of Honduras’s 2025 General Election
In support of CEPR’s observation mission, CEPR staff conducted statistical analysis of the presidential election results based on thousands of Monte Carlo simulations using the electoral data available to the mission through the CNE’s central repository of tally sheet images and data reports. This analysis did not identify evidence supporting claims of electoral fraud in the presidential election. At the same time, it bears emphasizing that the margins were extremely narrow, and the Monte Carlo simulation methodology involved a degree of uncertainty given the limits of the available data.
CEPR’s review of the CNE’s central data repository found that the quality of the data generated by the TREP system, through the optical character recognition (OCR) software implemented by the contracted TREP operator and subsequent human corrections, appeared to be exceptionally poor. The frequency and magnitude of discrepancies between the tally sheet images and the OCR-generated data appeared to be unusually high and these discrepancies were accompanied by media reports of unexplained irregularities. In some cases, as electoral officials entered tally sheet results for transmission to the central repository, the numbers automatically shifted from the box in which they were entered to boxes for other candidates.10 CEPR was unable to fully verify reported irregularities or to determine the extent to which these data issues were corrected through the established verification or special scrutiny processes, nor could it assess the potential impact of these irregularities on the election’s results, due to the considerable resources such a study would require.
Moreover, CEPR received a report from Smartmatic — the company contracted by the CNE to provide biometric voter identification — detailing the number of individuals the biometric system recorded as having voted in the 2025 elections. Figures from the TREP system’s OCR-generated tally sheet data reports consistently showed higher voter totals than those recorded in the Smartmatic biometric data, though CEPR’s mission is aware that the biometric voter identification system may have been bypassed for seemingly legitimate reasons, including system and device malfunctions.
Several other factors undermined voters’ trust in the election’s legitimacy, including delays in the publishing of results, last-minute changes to electoral rules by the CNE, the CNE’s decision not to conduct a full recount of tally sheets, failure to fully complete the special scrutiny processes, and the CNE’s lack of a united and coherent communications strategy.
The partisan composition of both the CNE and the Electoral Justice Tribunal (Tribunal de Justicia Electoral, or TJE) also allowed representatives of the National and Liberal parties to consistently outvote those from LIBRE on procedural and logistical determinations that electoral authorities are responsible for resolving — including decisions related to contracts with electoral service providers, timelines, key dates, and postelection processes — contributing to contradictory, counterproductive, and at times potentially illegal decisions made for political reasons.
The entire electoral process was also marked by egregious instances of foreign interference, particularly from political actors in the United States. Several US Republican lawmakers, including Representatives María Elvira Salazar and Carlos Giménez of Florida, as well as President Trump, urged Hondurans not to vote for LIBRE candidate Rixi Moncada. President Trump publicly endorsed National Party candidate Nasry Asfura and threatened economic consequences should either Moncada or Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla win the election. Such threats carry particular weight in Honduras, whose economy and citizens are highly reliant on trade11 with the United States and on remittances sent by Honduran migrants, which account for roughly a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product.12
Trump also granted a pardon to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States on drug trafficking charges. Despite his conviction and incarceration, Hernández is still considered a key leader of Asfura’s National Party. In 2017, Hernández had been declared reelected to a second presidential term in flawed elections that the OAS called to be repeated.13
2. Honduran Electoral Institutions
Elections in Honduras are overseen, organized, and certified by the CNE, an independent three-member board composed of representatives from each major party.14 The councilors who served on the CNE during the 2025 elections were CNE President Ana Paola Hall of the Liberal Party, Councilor Cossette López of the National Party, and Councilor Ochoa of the LIBRE Party.
Honduras’s second independent electoral body, the TJE, is tasked with resolving electoral disputes.15 Like the CNE, it consists of one representative from each of the three major parties. The members who served on the TJE during the 2025 electoral process were TJE President Mario Flores Urrutia of the National Party, Magistrate Miriam Barahona of the Liberal Party, and Magistrate Mario Morazán of LIBRE.
Both electoral bodies have been criticized for lacking independence and impartiality.16 Their three-member structure, with each seat tied to a major political party, makes them susceptible to partisan influence and — as most decisions are taken by majority vote rather than by consensus — allows two parties to consistently outvote the third.
As a result, the electoral bodies became politicized, clashing frequently over key aspects of the electoral process. Within the CNE, these disputes caused delays and disagreements over the design and awarding of the TREP contract, the contract for transporting electoral materials, the purchase of satellite Internet services and antennas for rural areas, the procedure for rectifying OCR mistakes, and other essential components of the election. At the TJE, divisions were most evident when the two opposition magistrates issued a ruling on the eligibility of a candidate — who had lost in the March presidential primary — to run for a legislative seat without the participation of the third magistrate who was affiliated with LIBRE. This decision triggered an impeachment process brought by the LIBRE-aligned attorney general’s office against the two magistrates, which the opposition argued was part of a broader pattern of judicial persecution by LIBRE.17
3. Operational and Technical Aspects of the Election Process
Legal Framework
The 2021 Honduran Elections Law (Decree 35-2021) governs how elections are conducted, including the structure of the bodies that oversee and administer the process, the regulation of political parties and candidates, campaign activities and financing, detailed procedures for balloting and initial vote counts at voting reception tables, the production and transport of electoral materials, and other matters relevant to the electoral process.18
However, the Elections Law establishes only very general provisions regarding the management of digital voting data, essentially referring only to information security measures for the calculation, transmission, and reporting of electronic electoral data. The law provides virtually no parameters for this essential stage of the electoral process, which proved to be the most contentious during the 2025 election.
The Balloting Process
The 2021 Elections Law mandates strict guidelines for handling ballots and recording the results on tally sheets. Each sheet corresponds to a specific polling station (mesa receptora de votos, or MRV) and serves as the primary source of data for the digital repository, which is used to calculate the final results. In the 2025 elections, registered voters were assigned to a specific MRV, each serving on average approximately 350 voters. Nationally, there were 19,167 MRVs.19 Every MRV contained three ballot boxes — one for presidential, congressional, and municipal ballots, respectively — and on average received just over 200 voters on election day.20 Each MRV was staffed by a polling board (junta receptora de votos, or JRV), made up of five individuals appointed by the three major parties and the CNE.
Upon arrival at the MRV, each voter underwent biometric verification using a system managed by the Smartmatic corporation. If fingerprints or facial recognition failed, the JRV members would attempt verification by inputting the voter’s national identification card number in the system. If this second search still yielded no results, an error was logged in the biometric system, and the official located the voter manually in the printed voter log. Once identified manually, the voter’s fingerprints would be scanned into the system and they were permitted to cast their ballot.
At the end of the day, the JRVs assigned to each table counted the votes in the presence of observers. The JRVs recorded each MRV’s results by manually completing three tally sheets, one for each of the three ballot boxes. These tally sheets were then entered into the TREP system, where they were first scanned and then converted to data reports by OCR technology. After each JRV reviewed and manually corrected errors in the data reports, the final data was transmitted to the CNE’s central data repository.
Management of Electronic Data
The 2021 Elections Law contains few provisions regarding the management of electronic data. Although an expanded framework addressing electronic data was approved in August as part of the terms of reference for awarding the TREP contract,21 the rules establishing the specific overall electoral procedures — known as Agreement 73-2025 — were not approved by the CNE until November 29, just one day before the elections.22
Agreement 73-2025 established detailed procedures for the creation of electronic data by the JRV, electronic security measures, data transmission, and other rules governing data management. It also set contingency transmission procedures, under which tally sheet images not transmitted on election day would be sent to the CNE’s central repository of data.
Fail-Safes and Biometric Verification of Voters
Agreement 73-2025 also established specific guidelines for setting up and testing biometric identification equipment and the TREP system before the elections. It set fail-safes to protect the integrity of the data on tally sheets, including rules on the certification of JRV signatures, the calculation of the total number of votes recorded on the tally sheets, protocols for scanning tally sheets for OCR transcription, and procedures allowing each JRV to manually correct data produced by the OCR.
In Article 8, Agreement 73-2025 mandated that the TREP system automatically compare the number of votes recorded on each tally sheet with the number of voters recorded in the biometric identification system. It specified that tally sheets reflecting different voter totals than those registered in the biometric records would still be included in the TREP results announced on election night. The agreement’s text notes that LIBRE Councilor Ochoa disagreed with these provisions, and public statements indicate that his main objection was the inclusion of results from tally sheets that did not match the biometric data in the TREP results.23
Visual Verification of Data in the Central Repository of Data
It is often emphasized that TREP results are preliminary and that the final outcome must be determined by the official vote count. However, it is important to note that the data transmitted through the TREP system to the CNE’s data repository is the same data used in the final count.
To ensure the accuracy of the data underlying the final count, Articles 19 and 20 of Agreement 73-2025 state that all TREP data must undergo visual verification, a process in which teams of CNE workers compare each tally sheet image with its corresponding OCR-generated report. If discrepancies are detected, the rules require that the data be sent for automated review. Should the automated process fail to resolve the discrepancy, the CNE must then approve any necessary manual corrections to the data through a unanimous vote.
4. Key Developments During the 2025 Election
Preelection Period
The three leading contenders for the presidency were LIBRE candidate Moncada, a former finance (2022–2024) and defense minister (2024–2025) in the Castro administration; Liberal Party candidate Nasralla, who served as the country’s vice president (2022–2024) for the first half of Castro’s term before resigning and joining the opposition; and Asfura, a former mayor of Tegucigalpa (2014–2022) who ran for the National Party.
The organization of the elections was hampered by multiple delays caused by internal disagreements within the CNE and TJE. Deliberations surrounding the TREP system’s design and the awarding of its operational contract, for instance, paralyzed the CNE for nearly a month. In June, Councilors López and Hall approved the TREP design by majority vote, while Councilor Ochoa opposed it, arguing that allowing manual corrections at the CNE processing center to tally sheet data generated by OCR scans could open the door to manipulation of the results.24 Throughout July, Councilor Ochoa subsequently failed to attend meetings where the CNE would finalize the terms of reference for the TREP bidding process, which was expected to allow for the contested manual correction procedure.25
The councilors eventually reached a unanimous agreement for a modified TREP design and terms of reference on August 4, several days past the July 29 deadline to award the contract.26 Under the revised design, any data reports generated by the OCR system that were inconsistent with the tally sheet’s image would still be published, but excluded from the preliminary count.27 The agreement also stated that the day after the election, 100 percent of the OCR-generated data reports would begin the process of undergoing human, visual verification. When discrepancies between the tally sheet images and the OCR data were identified, correction of the tally sheet data had to be approved unanimously by the CNE councilors. These rules were formally implemented with the issuance of Agreement 73-2025 on November 29.
The CNE unanimously awarded the TREP contract to Grupo ASD, a Colombian firm, on August 29.28 On November 9, a simulation of the TREP system was conducted. Councilor Ochoa said there were serious deficiencies in the system during the test, noting that only 35.7 percent of tally sheets were transmitted and that significant connectivity issues had occurred.29 He asserted that these issues persisted in subsequent simulations closer to election day.30 In response to these alleged failures, LIBRE candidate Moncada announced that LIBRE would not recognize the TREP’s preliminary results and would instead wait until all ballot review processes had produced a final count.31
The tender for the contract to provide satellite Internet connectivity to voting centers in remote areas was also delayed. Councilor López accused Councilor Ochoa of pressuring her to award the contract to the firm Smartmatic,32 while Ochoa countered that the other councilors sought to award the contract to front companies that he claimed had participated in electoral fraud in 2017.33 The contract was ultimately awarded unanimously to a consortium made up of Reytel and Ufinet34 after Smartmatic withdrew its bid.35 Smartmatic had already been awarded the contract to manage the biometric voter identification system.36
Additional delays compounded these disruptions, pushing back other critical milestones in the electoral timeline. For example, the contract for the transportation of electoral materials was originally scheduled to be awarded on October 15. However, earlier setbacks, the CNE’s outstanding debt to the companies that handled transportation for the primary elections,37 and the withdrawal of bidders due to the compressed timeline 38ultimately delayed the award until November 16.39
The preelectoral period was also rife with controversy. In late October, the country’s attorney general launched an investigation into alleged audio recordings40 of Councilor López conspiring to commit fraud and interfere with the elections.41 The opposition claimed42 the recordings were AI-generated and accused the attorney general, and LIBRE more broadly, of engaging in judicial persecution.43 Another controversy concerned an indictment against two opposition-affiliated TJE magistrates that prompted an impeachment process. They were charged with abuse of authority for issuing a ruling without convening the third magistrate, who is affiliated with LIBRE.44
Analysts, politicians, watchdog groups, and CNE President45 Hall also criticized46 the Honduran military’s conduct before the vote, particularly after the head of the armed forces — who was perceived to be aligned with LIBRE — requested that the CNE provide the military with tally sheets on election day to perform an independent count.47 The CNE argued that this exceeded the military’s electoral mandate as defined by the constitution.48 The request was never approved, and the military neither received nor conducted any independent tally of the vote.
In addition, the elections were held during a partial state of emergency, raising concerns from human rights groups that this would impact the vote’s integrity.49 The government maintained that the state of emergency was limited to specific regions plagued by security issues and that it did not impact citizens’ political rights.
Election Day
Throughout election day, CEPR was present at four voting centers in Tegucigalpa. The mission freely observed key parts of the voting process, including the CNE’s election day opening ceremony, the opening of voting centers, the use of biometric devices, the casting of ballots, the closing of polling stations, and the filling out of tally sheets by poll workers. CEPR noted high levels of voter participation and long lines at voting centers.
CEPR observed no irregularities except for partial failures of the biometric devices used to verify voters’ identities. When such failures occurred, poll workers checked voter identities manually. In one instance, a biometric device proved inoperable, so voters assigned to that table shared the biometric device assigned to a neighboring table, a procedure established in the electoral rules. CEPR took note of media50 reports of voter intimidation in areas with gang presence.51
Hours before the election day opening ceremony, López, the National Party councilor at the CNE, announced she would not attend because she had received information that violent LIBRE-aligned groups planned to intimidate her at the venue where the event would take place.52 CEPR’s team in Honduras was at the site from early in the morning and did not see the violent groups López referred to in her social media post; everything remained calm throughout the opening event.
US Representative Salazar tweeted in Spanish on election day that Honduras “either advances with freedom, democracy, and growth, or it retreats with Rixi Moncada toward communism, economic collapse, and the same darkness that devastated Venezuela and Cuba.”53 Although she was not in the country, she was nevertheless accredited as an electoral observer, making her statement a potential violation of Honduran electoral law, specifically Article 19 of the CNE’s Regulation on Electoral Observation for the 2025 General Election.54
Due to concerns raised by several stakeholders about the TREP, the CEPR mission issued a public statement at 2:30 p.m. warning that practical issues with the system could prevent the preliminary results from being fully representative of the final outcome.55 The statement also urged all actors to wait for the CNE’s certification of the official results.
Although the preliminary results were scheduled to be announced jointly by all three CNE councilors at 9 p.m., the announcement was delayed until around 11 p.m. With just over 30 percent of the tally sheets processed, the results were too limited and too close to indicate an irreversible trend in favor of one candidate. At that point, Asfura held 40.62 percent, Nasralla 38.72 percent, and Moncada 19.6 percent.56 Before the CNE’s announcement, however, CEPR observed coverage of unauthorized exit polls on election night by Honduran media outlets.
Postelection Period
The month following election day was marked by uncertainty and a growing crisis of confidence in the integrity of the results, which the CNE had until December 30 to certify. In the weeks following the election, the CNE’s results dashboard went down several times, and the central repository of electoral data was repeatedly left without updates, sometimes for days at a time. In some instances, transmission equipment went offline, the most notable example being votes cast in the United States, which were initially not transmitted. Moreover, CEPR observed tally sheets with inconsistencies, including a very large number of discrepancies between the scanned images of the tally sheets and the results reported by the OCR-generated data reports, as well as inflated vote totals compared with the number of voters assigned to an MRV. These issues were also acknowledged by the CNE and were widely reported in Honduran and international media.
CNE President Hall blamed these issues on technical problems with the TREP system,57 along with an unauthorized pause in the system by the contracted TREP operator, Grupo ASD, for maintenance.58 Councilor Ochoa cited deliberate sabotage and fraud, problems with the data management system created by Grupo ASD, and a decision by the other CNE councilors on the eve of the elections to scrap the requirement to cross-reference the total number of voters reported on tally sheets with the number recorded in the biometric system.59 Observers at CESPAD, for their part, stated that technical deficiencies and other last-minute changes by the CNE contributed to system problems, particularly the removal of certain verification checks for tally sheets.60
Allegations of Fraud and Calls for Annulment
The LIBRE and Liberal party presidential candidates both alleged electoral fraud and challenged the legitimacy of the CNE’s official results, which ultimately indicated that they had lost.
Moncada, President Castro, and other LIBRE leaders alleged that the vote had been fraudulent and called for the annulment of the election, citing the repeated outages of the TREP system, the large number of inconsistent tally sheets, problems with the biometric verification system, and US interference.61 The nine-member permanent committee of Congress — which manages administrative tasks while the body is out of session and was controlled by LIBRE and its allies — also stated that an “electoral coup” was underway and that it would not validate the results.62 LIBRE’s CNE councilor, Marlon Ochoa, contended that over 17,000 tally sheets63 contained inconsistencies and called for a full recount. 64 Of these, Ochoa and the Castro government alleged that 14,000 tally sheets contained mismatches between the number of voters recorded on the sheets and by the biometric registration systems,65 representing a difference of 982,142 votes.66
Members of the LIBRE Party told the CEPR mission that their accusations of fraud were informed by the party’s experience in the 2017 elections. At the time, the OAS called for a repeat vote, citing a lack of “democratic quality and guarantees” due to irregularities and deficiencies in the process, including “deliberate human intrusions in the computer system.”67 Members of LIBRE said Councilor Ochoa’s calls for recounts were part of an effort to prevent a questionable outcome. They added that his absences during votes on certain electoral procedures before and after the elections — including during the July standoff over the TREP contract — were a legitimate use of the electoral rules to achieve guarantees against fraud, given the unanimity requirement for certain votes at the CNE.
Liberal Party candidate Nasralla similarly alleged that there was “monumental fraud” and called for a review of all tally sheets.68 He claimed that every tally sheet contained inconsistencies and that the data transmitted by the TREP did not match the tally sheets collected by his party.69 Like LIBRE, Nasralla also referenced the alleged fraud that had occurred in 2017.70
LIBRE Party Councilor Ochoa71 and Nasralla both called for a vote-by-vote recount as the only way to ensure the election’s credibility,72 a request the National Party’s vice presidential candidate also appeared to be open to supporting.73 Nevertheless, the CNE ultimately approved a review of only 2,792 tally sheets, a process that was not completed in its entirety.
On December 4, LIBRE supporters and activists protested in front of the US embassy against Washington’s interference in the elections and the release of former President Juan Orlando Hernández.74 Demonstrations over fraud allegations followed: On December 9, LIBRE supporters gathered near the National Institute for Vocational Training (Instituto Nacional de Formación Profesional, or INFOP),75 the CNE’s logistical center where electoral materials were stored, and on December 15, supporters of the LIBRE and Liberal parties protested at INFOP at different times.76
Issues Surrounding Visual Verification
As required by Agreement 73-2025, the visual verification process began the day after the elections, on December 1. Two days later, however, visual verification was halted when the data management system went offline. Election workers reported that the results of the incomplete verification were not to be used until the full process was completed. By mid-December, CEPR could not confirm whether the mandated visual verification of all tally sheet data reports had taken place, although the European Union Electoral Observation Mission report77 states it was concluded on December 13.78
On December 21, the CNE held an impromptu special session in which Councilors Hall and López voted to amend Agreement 73-2025, allowing a simple majority of councilors — rather than the previous requirement of unanimous approval — to authorize corrections to electoral data identified during visual verification.79 Councilor López cited what she called unjustified delays in approving corrections by CNE personnel affiliated with LIBRE. Councilor Ochoa explained that his team could not approve any modifications unless the memo requesting the change included the following specific documentation: an image of the tally sheet, a clear identification of the error, and the proposed correction.
Special Scrutiny Recounts
On December 11, the CNE unanimously voted that 2,792 tally sheets containing inconsistencies,80 including legibility issues,81 errors in vote totals, mismatches between the number of voters and those registered, and other irregularities, would be reviewed in a special scrutiny recount process.82 The review did not begin until December 1983 due to disagreements between the National and Liberal parties, reportedly regarding how many tally sheets should be reviewed.84 To resolve the impasse, the National and Liberal parties reportedly reached an agreement under which they would also support the review of an additional 7,795 tally sheets.85 During this time, CNE Councilors Hall and López also issued86 a memo rejecting LIBRE’s request for a vote-by-vote recount on legal grounds.87
Once underway, the special scrutiny recount faced further delays,88 as all three major parties disagreed on how to register irregular tally sheet data transmissions.89 Councilor Ochoa90 and Liberal Party candidate Nasralla also rejected a December 21 decision by CNE Councilors Hall and López to approve changes to the visual verification rules for 691 tally sheet data reports from ballot boxes pending review.91 This reduced the number of ballot boxes subject to the special scrutiny recount to 2,101. Hall said the decision followed the recommendations of an external audit, which concluded that the inconsistencies in that batch could be corrected through the ordinary visual verification rules, and did not require a full special scrutiny review.92
Certification of the Elections
On the night of December 23, Councilors Hall and López, along with Alternate Councilor Carlos Enrique Cardona, serving in place of Ochoa, voted for the CNE to issue an official declaration of a winner “with the data available at this time,”93 even though around 395 tally sheets94 and several legal challenges remained pending review.95 The declaration was issued the following day, naming Asfura the winner with 40.27 percent of the vote, a margin of just over 27,000 votes ahead of Nasralla. Cardona represents the Honduras Savior Party, founded by Nasralla in 2020.96 Like all alternates at the CNE, he was appointed by the Honduran Congress for a five-year term. Hall and López summoned him to attend the meeting, as he had previously served in Ochoa’s place.
In response, Nasralla called for a vote-by-vote recount, requested the CNE extend the declaration deadline to January 10, and said the council’s decision may have been illegal.97 Councilor Ochoa argued that the decision was invalid, as he had left the plenary meeting before the vote, meaning the body lacked the necessary three-member quorum to hold the vote.98 Ochoa also said he would file a complaint with the attorney general since the special scrutiny review needed to be completed before the results could be announced.99 On this point, the CNE’s December 24 declaration stated that while the special scrutiny review process is “recognized as a mechanism of review and control,” it should not “paralyze the expression of the sovereign will of the electorate.”100
Following the declaration of the presidential election results, the CNE announced the start of a special scrutiny recount for the municipal and legislative elections. Councilors Hall and López — again joined by Alternate Councilor Cardona in place of Ochoa — declared the results for these elections on December 30, despite the fact that the CNE hadn’t finished examining all of the tally sheets flagged for review for this second special scrutiny.101 In its declaration, the CNE claimed that the special scrutiny recount had not been fully completed due to what it described as “force majeure” obstacles, acts of sabotage, and threats from political parties and political sectors. The CNE recognized that only 86.59 percent of legislative-level tally sheets and 90.35 percent of municipal-level tally sheets had been processed and that 430 tally sheets and 66 legal challenges at the municipal level would have to be reviewed by the TJE.102 Hours before the declaration was issued, Councilor Ochoa requested that the other two councilors approve an extension of the December 30 declaration deadline in order to review all outstanding inconsistencies.103
The declaration formally certified the results of several local elections where the outcomes fell within a narrow margin of error. In Tegucigalpa, National Party candidate Juan Diego Zelaya was declared the winner of the mayoral election by fewer than 900 votes over LIBRE candidate Jorge Aldana.104 Aldana challenged the outcome before the TJE, alleging that the special scrutiny recount was finalized while at least 435 tally sheets — representing approximately 100,000 votes — were still awaiting review.105 The TJE rejected his appeal.106
Neither the presidential election declaration nor the municipal and legislative declarations were sent by the CNE to La Gaceta, the official government newspaper, for publication, as required by law. Instead, they were released only on the CNE’s website. CNE President Hall said the results were not published in La Gaceta “due to the continued refusal of the corresponding state agencies” but argued that the announcement was nonetheless properly made public through the CNE’s site and media coverage.107 Reporting indicates that the CNE attempted to submit the declaration for publication twice — on December 24 and 31 — but no staff were present at La Gaceta’s offices to receive it because of the holidays.108
The electoral authorities’ failure to complete a full recount, along with allegations of fraud and US interference, prompted the Honduran Congress’s permanent committee to convene a special plenary session on January 9. During that session, LIBRE legislators, including alternates, together with three lawmakers from other parties, passed a decree ordering the CNE to conduct a complete recount of the November 30 election tally sheets.109 The decree also instructed the attorney general’s office to determine whether CNE councilors could be held criminally liable for failing to count all votes and for other issues in the elections. It cited Article 205 of the Honduran Constitution, which authorizes Congress to carry out recounts when electoral authorities are unable to officially declare an election, arguing that the CNE’s declaration was not legally valid. President Castro approved the decree, and it was published in La Gaceta, making it law.110
The Honduran opposition boycotted the decree vote111 and condemned the move, calling it a threat to democracy and an attempt to overturn the electoral results.112 Rather than participating in the vote, opposition lawmakers convened a parallel session of Congress and passed a motion calling on the armed forces to detain Luis Redondo, the president of Congress.113 They argued that the decree was invalid because they did not recognize the permanent committee’s authority and because it was adopted without a proper quorum, as LIBRE alternates had voted in place of absent opposition legislators, which is illegal under Article 60 of the Organic Law of the Legislative Branch.
CNE President Hall defended the council’s declaration, stating that the CNE is the only body legally authorized to certify electoral results and that it was unable to complete a full vote count due to staffing issues, threats, and intimidation.114
Congress’s decree was challenged before the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice. Nevertheless, legislators, mayors, and President Asfura were issued their credentials and sworn in on January 27 before the court had ruled and without the contentious recount ordered by the Congress’s permanent committee having taken place.115
Throughout the vote count and certification process, the OAS Electoral Observation Mission (EOM) urged a rapid certification of the results. On December 6, the mission called on the CNE “to expedite tallying and await completion of the vote count,” adding that “the OAS/EOM considers it imperative that the electoral authorities fully guarantee that the subsequent stages of the process — including the high volume of tally sheets not yet counted, the special scrutiny, and the challenge phase — are carried out with total clarity, maximum efficiency, and without any type of delay.”116 After the special scrutiny process was made official, the OAS “made an urgent call” on December 15 for the CNE “to immediately begin the special scrutiny (escrutinio especial) and adopt expeditious decisions to obtain official results in the shortest time possible.”117 On December 22, it further urged in a social media post in Spanish that the process conclude “as soon as possible, in strict accordance with the law and with full guarantees for all political and social actors.”118 Once the CNE issued its official declaration on December 24, the OAS said it “took note” of the results and stated “that the certified results reflect the will expressed by citizens at the ballot boxes that were counted,” while also calling “for the remaining procedures still underway to be concluded.”119
5. US Interference in the Elections
Political actors in the US repeatedly interfered in Honduras’s 2025 election, in a clear effort to undermine one presidential candidate and promote another.
For weeks before election day, several US Republican lawmakers, including120 Florida Representatives Salazar121 and Gimenez,122 and the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs Republican majority’s Twitter account warned that LIBRE might commit election fraud and suggested that both the Castro government and Moncada were seeking to take Honduras down an undemocratic path.123 No evidence was presented to support these allegations.
On November 20 — 10 days before Election Day — the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing titled “Democracy in Peril: the Fight for Free Elections in Honduras,” in which Representative Salazar praised the 2009 coup that ousted President Castro’s husband, former President Manuel Zelaya.124 She also referred to Moncada as a “communist” and stated, “I am not telling you who to vote for.125 All I am saying is do not elect a communist.” At the hearing, Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas highlighted the conflicts of interest involving one of the witnesses, Carlos Trujillo — President Trump’s former ambassador to the OAS and a lobbyist whose firm previously represented several Honduran companies, including Próspera, which is currently suing the Honduran government.126 In his testimony, Trujillo stated unequivocally, albeit without evidence, that LIBRE was attempting to rig the elections.
Liberal Party candidate Nasralla was present at the hearing. Although Honduran media reported that he would testify, he ultimately did not.127 In the months leading up to the election, Nasralla traveled128 to Washington several times to meet with US members of Congress,129 as did National Party candidate Asfura.130 Representative Salazar expressed her support for Nasralla repeatedly following the announcement of his candidacy in 2024.131 In October of 2024, she and Representative Gimenez held a press conference with Nasralla in which both legislators accused the LIBRE administration of attacking democracy.132
On November 22, repeating the opposition’s claim that LIBRE lawmakers in Congress would try to choose the next president, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau expressed concern about the elections after speaking with unidentified members of the Honduran business community.133
On November 26, President Trump endorsed National Party candidate Asfura in a social media post portraying LIBRE candidate Moncada as a communist and labeling Liberal Party candidate Nasralla as a “borderline communist” in disguise.134
On November 28, Trump again expressed support for Asfura and warned that he would cut US funding to Honduras if voters elected a different candidate.135 He also announced a pardon for former National Party President Hernández, who was serving a 45-year prison sentence in the US on drug-trafficking charges. Hernández was released from prison on December 1. Trump’s endorsements were issued during Honduras’s “electoral silence” period, which, under Honduran law, prohibits electoral propaganda and campaign activities in the five days before an election. Nevertheless, Asfura,136 the National Party,137 and some of its members amplified the endorsement,138 potentially in violation of the law.139
Representative Salazar tweeted in Spanish on election day that Honduras “either advances with freedom, democracy, and growth, or it retreats with Rixi Moncada toward communism, economic collapse, and the same darkness that devastated Venezuela and Cuba.”140 Although she was not in the country, she was nevertheless accredited as an electoral observer, making her statement a potential violation of Honduran electoral law, specifically Article 19 of the CNE’s Regulation on Electoral Observation for the 2025 General Election.141
Days after the election, with the final results still unclear, Trump took to social media to baselessly accuse Honduran electoral authorities of attempting to “change the outcome,” warning that there would be “hell to pay” if that were the case.142 As vote counting continued on December 8 and 9, Representative Salazar also publicly dismissed the LIBRE Party’s concerns regarding the electoral process and US interference,143 and claimed it was trying to steal the elections.144
Additionally, on December 19, the US imposed visa restrictions on CNE Councilor Ochoa and TJE Magistrate Mario Morazán, who are affiliated with LIBRE, citing their alleged efforts to impede the vote count.145 This action appeared designed to coerce Ochoa and Morazán into ending their opposition to, and public criticism of, decisions made by electoral authorities from the other parties and to cast further negative light on the LIBRE Party, despite the fact that the primary obstacles to launching a special scrutiny recount at the time were disagreements between the National and Liberal parties.146
Despite recurring system outages, a reported data security breach, and the hurdles in the organization of the special scrutiny recount described above, the Trump administration used public statements to push the CNE for a swift declaration of a winner.147 The State Department initially urged “continued patience while waiting for the CNE’s official results” on December 1,148 but on December 17 it said the CNE “needs to begin immediately the special scrutiny process to finalize official results.”149
6. Media Bias
The electoral observation mission primarily monitored public and private news outlets with a digital presence. CEPR’s team found that state outlets such as Televisión Nacional de Honduras (TNH) provided disproportionate and primarily positive coverage of LIBRE candidate Moncada and the actions of the party’s electoral authorities. Furthermore, TNH amplified the content of the party’s platform, criticisms of the Liberal and National parties,150 and LIBRE’s concerns regarding the election,151 while omitting the concerns of the opposition or criticisms of Moncada’s campaign.152 At times, TNH’s reporting153 directly mirrored the candidate’s statements.154 This pattern was largely repeated by the outlet UNE TV.
However, polls conducted by the organization Equipo de Reflexión, Investigación y Comunicación (ERIC), affiliated with the Catholic Church’s Jesuit order, show that private media outlets dominate the airwaves and remain the most widely followed in the country. In ERIC’s latest poll from 2025, private outlets such as La Prensa, El Heraldo, La Tribuna, HCH, and Canal 5 are far more popular than state-run outlets.155
While private media outlets offered broader coverage of the three major candidates, they generally maintained a negative tone with regard to the LIBRE campaign while providing neutral or positive coverage of the opposition candidates. Notably, they often characterized the actions of LIBRE electoral officials, such as Councilor Ochoa, as a risk to the electoral process. El Heraldo, for example, often included critical commentary and opinions from opposition figures about the LIBRE campaign, government officials, and Ochoa — either embedded within news stories or published as standalone pieces — while rarely applying the same approach to the other parites.156 Proceso Digital similarly ran disproportionate, critical, and negative commentary about the ruling party. Independent outlets, such as Criterio, gave more balanced coverage than the traditional outlets.
7. Political Violence
CEPR’s mission in Honduras identified several concerning incidents of political violence during and after the campaign. Here, we present descriptions of a few of those attacks.
Gunmen killed a five-year-old boy and injured a 14-year-old girl when they opened fire on a caravan of LIBRE activists leaving a campaign rally on November 17.157 On November 24, the offices of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras, or COPINH), a human, Indigenous, and environmental rights organization, came under armed attack.158 The attack took place in Intibucá, while members of the organization were present and at work. Another incident occurred on January 22 in Choluteca, when Reina Margarita Carrasco, a human rights defender and legislative candidate in the 2022 elections, was murdered shortly after protesting in Tegucigalpa in favor of a full vote count.159
In addition, Cristosal, a human rights organization, issued a report documenting political violence between September 2024 and a few days before the election.160 The group identified 67 “representative” cases of political violence, selected for their “relevance, social impact, and geographic location.” These incidents included murders, physical harm, gender-based violence, threats, and other forms of violence. The victims were primarily candidates, government officials, and party activists from the three main political parties. The report states that seven murders occurred in total, six of which targeted candidates or elected officials, while one victim was a five-year-old child (mentioned above).
Furthermore, the US outlet The Intercept161 and Miroslava Cerpas,162 the head of Honduras’s 911 emergency system, reported that gangs and organized criminal groups intimidated citizens into voting for certain candidates.
8. Civil Society Concerns Regarding New Elected Authorities
Honduran human rights organizations that CEPR spoke to expressed concern about the potential consequences of Asfura’s election for human rights in Honduras. Central to these concerns is the risk of increased violence against human rights defenders, Indigenous peoples, and community activists. They fear that the new administration will weaken human rights institutions and that — as was the case with prior National Party governments — its security policies may allow gangs, organized criminal groups, and paramilitary groups to operate more freely in an environment of increased corruption. They also warn that, despite the human rights concerns associated with the Castro government’s protracted state of emergency in parts of the country, the armed forces and police may face even fewer constraints, further fueling abuses. These dynamics could exacerbate Honduras’s already dire human rights situation.
Human rights organizations further fear an increase in both violent and illegal displacement of small farming communities, as well as displacement carried out under a quasi-legal veil through the abusive use of preventive evictions. Preventive evictions, as they are currently implemented, allow influential agribusinesses — often holding land titles challenged as fraudulent — to carry out removals without due process, leaving competing land rights claimants unable to defend their claims in court. These concerns are especially acute in land conflicts involving Indigenous communities, small farmers, and agrarian reform cooperatives, as well as in the related violence targeting land rights defenders.
In addition, several of the groups CEPR met with cautioned that a shrinking of civic space may accompany this intensification of human rights issues. They noted that this could take the form of new registration requirements, increased audits, and legal persecution, which they believe would be used to suppress resistance to government policies and demands for justice and accountability.
Civil society organizations also fear the administration’s potential undoing of the Castro government’s efforts to roll back Economic Development and Employment Zones (zonas de empleo y desarrollo económico, or ZEDEs). ZEDEs are controversial semiautonomous economic free zones where private corporations operate with virtually no oversight, establishing their own courts, laws, tax systems, and private police forces. In 2021, the United Nations expressed strong concern over Honduran ZEDEs, stating that they posed a potential threat to human rights in Honduras.163 Organizations that CEPR spoke to worry that, in an effort to align more closely with the Trump administration — whose orbit includes figures such as Peter Thiel who have invested in the Próspera ZEDE — the Asfura administration may seek to promote or expand these zones.
Since assuming office, Asfura’s National Party and its allies in Congress have purged officials linked to or aligned with LIBRE. In a process that lasted just three days, the National and Liberal Party impeached Attorney General Johel Zelaya on March 25.164 That same day, Supreme Court of Justice President Rebeca Ráquel Obando resigned amid reports of her own imminent impeachment.165 Local and international human rights organizations — including the Center for Justice and International Law, the Washington Office on Latin America, the Due Process of Law Foundation, COPINH, and others — responded with concern in a joint statement, warning that the impeachments were being “carried out in a manner inconsistent with international human rights standards and in a context of high institutional polarization.”166
Less than a month later, on April 16, the National and Liberal parties impeached four electoral authorities in a single day: LIBRE CNE Councilor Ochoa, LIBRE TJE Magistrate Morazán, and TJE Alternate Magistrates Lourdes Mejia and Gabriel Gutierrez.167 CNE Alternate Councilor Karen Rodríguez had also resigned on April 9, when her name was raised in connection with a possible impeachment.168 All these officials, along with Zelaya, were removed from their posts on the grounds that they had allegedly interfered with or obstructed the general elections. The targeted individuals and LIBRE, however, contend that they are being subjected to political retaliation and persecution.
9. Recommendations
1. The Honduran Congress should consider amending the 2021 Elections Law:
(a) to establish clear and detailed provisions for managing digital voting data during the final count in order to prevent disputes such as those observed in these elections;
(b) to define specific requirements for the awarding and operation of the TREP system, including minimum performance standards (such as optical character recognition accuracy), to reduce the risk of institutional gridlock and improve the reliability of preliminary results;
(c) to require a longer timeline for awarding elections-related contracts, including initiating the TREP contract award process earlier than in previous election cycles, and to conduct more frequent preelection audits to ensure the system is functioning properly;
(d) to prohibit last-minute changes to electoral rules and procedures, except under narrowly defined emergency circumstances, and to require that any such changes be unanimously approved and publicly justified;
(e) to encourage electoral authorities, particularly the CNE, to adopt a coherent, unified, and timely communication strategy, bolstering transparency by providing clear explanations of procedures and decisions, and ensuring consistent public messaging;
(f) to require the CNE to fully complete any special scrutiny or recount process it undertakes, including allowing reasonable delays to the certification process when necessary; and
(g) to state that the will of the electorate is unknown until a full and reliable vote count is carried out.
2. Honduran electoral authorities should impose effective sanctions on Honduran political actors who, during the electoral silence period, publicize endorsements or statements of foreign officials that favor or oppose particular candidates.
3. The United States Congress should investigate improper interference by US authorities in the Honduran elections:
(a) to determine whether statements made by the President of the United States in relation to Honduras’s election violate the Charter of the OAS, which expressly prohibits external interference in another state’s political affairs; and
(b) to determine the impact and propriety of US sanctions, such as visa revocations, imposed on electoral officials during any stage of the electoral process.
