Was the election in Honduras stolen, or bought?

VALLADOLID, Honduras – It’s not hard to notice that the federal government has been doting upon this isolated town just north of the border with El Salvador.

Along a freshly paved highway, thick, superficial tubes carry water to distant neighborhoods. The facades of cinder block homes are painted blue, with white, star-shaped arches—emblematic of the ruling National Party’s flag. At the central plaza, locals carry backpacks stamped with the federal seal and signature of president Juan Orlando Hernández.

And a cement plaque sits along a road that’s under construction. It reads: “Here began the political career of Honduras’ best president,” signed by Hernández himself.

Since Hernández was reelected in the disputed November 26 election, the country has hotly debated whether or not electronic fraud in the vote count played a role after a computer server crashed halting the tabulation. Opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla held a early lead that many considered irreversible, but Hernández ended up winning by 1.5%.

As many as 30 people have died in anti-government protests in the last two months.

But a visit to this rural town in Hernández’s home department of Lempira suggests the election might have been bought before votes were even tallied. Valladolid was part of the final 30 percent of rural votes that helped catapult the incumbent to victory.

Official tallies showed that Nasralla held a slight lead until the rural votes were tabulated, which saw a huge swing to the ruling party. The rural results only came in days after the rest of the country as the tally sheets and ballot boxes had to be trucked to the capital due to poor internet communications.

Vida Mejor: A better life or buying votes?

The European Union Electoral Observer Mission (EU EOM) noted the use of state resources for campaign activities in a recent report, pointing out a “lack of definition between the government and National Party” when it came to assets and other social benefits.

Perhaps nowhere in Honduras is that more apparent than in Valladolid, where many benefit from Hernández’s signature poverty eradication initiative, Vida Mejor (Better Life). The president captured almost 80 percent of the vote here—by far the highest percentage in the country and a 20-point jump over the previous election.

Roughly 70 percent of students here are beneficiaries of a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program called Bono Vida Mejor. Pioneered by Mexico and Brazil, CCTs have spread across Latin America, taking full effect in Honduras in 2010 with the administration Hernández’s predecessor, Porfirio Lobo, also of the National Party.

When Hernández assumed the presidency in 2014, rural families became the focus and the program was placed under the umbrella of Vida Mejor along with a vast expansion of direct assistance programs—made possible by a three percent increase in the national sales tax and low-interest loans from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration.

In 2016, the latest year for which distribution of Vida Mejor benefits is available, over 226,000 families were enrolled in CCTs. Hundreds of thousands more received other benefits.

Studies show how CCTs generate political and economic benefits. A report on Mexico’s program, conducted by Yale University professor Ana de la O, found that the transfers resulted in “an increase in turnout and incumbent vote share.”

Nationwide, turnout in Honduras’ past election dropped 3.6 percent, with the highest drops in urban departments. Where the concentration of CCTs—and other Vida Mejor benefits—is highest, such as in Lempira, turnout either remained the same or fell only marginally and incumbent vote share increased, often dramatically.

While urban centers are growing, 50% of Honduras' population still lives in rural areas where traditional conservative values prevail, points out Arturo Corrales, former Foreign Minister and Security Minister in the Hernández government, who now heads a political consulting firm, Ingeniería Gerencial.

In Valladolid, where the overwhelming majority of families are enrolled in the Bono Vida Mejor or have received other forms of direct assistance such as latrines, cement floors or even houses, a peculiar phenomenon occurred on election day.

“Everyone said their vote out loud.”

“The elections in my town were practically public,” said Wendy Flores, vice-mayoral candidate for the opposition Libre Party. “Everyone said their vote out loud.”

Observers at polling stations also reported that the majority of people who voted for the National Party announced their choice to party representatives who then filled out the ballots for them, instead of marking their ballots in private.

Honduras’ election system is run by the political parties from top to bottom, including at the precinct level, creating even more potential for partisan influence and bias.

Hernández has expressed willingness to reform the electoral system during his second term, including allowing independent citizens to run the polling stations.

“I have told the different political leaders that they can come with any proposal; no matter how broad or aggressive it is … because it does not correspond only to the president, it must be something that allows a minimum level of consensus so that we all agree here in building a new electoral system,” he told Univision News in an interview.

But Hernández defended the Vida Mejor program, saying it was vital to reduce poverty, and should be made permanent. “It’s a strong component in the new multidimensional approach to reducing poverty,” he said, stressing the need for improved rural infrastructure, such as access to drinking water, education, healthcare and healthcare.

However, under Hernández, critics say Vida Mejor has hired local politicians and activists to serve as its representatives.

“All the assistance programs are politicized,” said Edis Carvajal, inside the agricultural supplies store where he works. “They say to you ‘We’re going to give you the Bono but you have to support us.’”

In a report, the Organization of American States Electoral Observer Mission declared instances of voters being urged to vote publicly: “Under Honduran law, the vote is supposed to be secret,” the report says. “Representatives of political parties approached voters to keep track of voting intentions. Massive movements of voters were observed in different parts of the country and in 3 departments observers reported the buying of votes.”

After four years of Vida Mejor, poverty indicators are stagnant, hovering around 64%, according to the World Bank.

Last year, the Secretary of Social Inclusion and Development, which oversees Vida Mejor, overspent its allotted budget by 26 percent in an apparent last-ditch effort to influence voters.

Despite widespread disagreement with the president’s legally questionable bid for reelection, numerous corruption scandals involving his government, Hernández squeaked out a win by 50,000 votes.

According to calculations by Walter Mebane, a professor at the University of Michigan who developed an electoral forensics toolkit for USAID, there were roughly 60,000 incidences of incremental fraud—when a vote is cast based on some form of obligation or external influence—in favor of the National Party. Given the difficulty of detecting this kind of fraud, the precise amount could be much higher.

With over 18,000 polling stations across the nation, fewer than three votes at each station would have needed to be coerced or bought to deliver a victory to Hernandez.

"A democratic weakness"

In advance of the election, a new Law of Clean Politics was approved by Congress that intended to limit campaign expenses and contributions and reinforce transparency. But in practice the law applies only to opposition parties.

“[The government] used the national budget to undertake disguised campaigns,” said Victor Meza, director of the Center for Honduran Documentation.

Vida Mejor is perhaps the most visible example, but it’s far from unique.

A report by the Social Forum on Honduran Development and External Debt classified last year’s national budget as exhibiting “electoral characteristics,” or prioritizing line items that could be exploited for political gain.

The vast resource gap between the ruling party and the opposition was clear everywhere one looked during the campaign. According to the EU observer mission “the coverage of the campaign in the media revealed a strong inequality between candidates in favor of Juan Orlando Hernández,” who in terms of paid propaganda on TV and in the newspapers had a 64 percent to 15 percent edge over his main rival Nasralla.

More than supporting a particular party, the propaganda and direct assistance programs almost entirely benefit the president.

“There is an identification of government actions with the presidential figure,” said Miguel Calix, executive director in Honduras for the Netherlands Institute of Multiparty Democracy. “That for me is a democratic weakness.”

Additional reporting by David Adams in Tegucigalpa