Honduran election turnout lower than first estimated

[Judi Lynn]

Source: CNN

Honduran election turnout lower than first estimated
By Mariano Castillo, CNN
December 22, 2009 -- Updated 1854 GMT (0254 HKT)

(CNN) -- The official tally of last month's presidential election is almost complete, and one pivotal piece of electoral data -- voter turnout -- will be lower than officials have previously claimed.

The turnout matters as it may reflect how much trust the Hondurans placed in an election during a political crisis pitting the country's de facto government against the nation's ousted president.

According to Honduras' Supreme Electoral Tribunal and interviews with the electoral officials, with 99.8 percent of the votes counted, 2,298,080 people participated in the November 29 election.

This represents a 50 percent voter turnout, a figure much lower than the 61 percent officially estimated by the electoral tribunal on election day, and lower than revised turnout figures that the Electoral Tribunal gave to CNN as recently as December 5.



Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/12/21/honduras.election.turnout/index.html

[newlib]

1. U.S. really allowed Hond. coup to succeed. shameful. nt

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

2. The U.S. did, or the Honduran Court, its military, and its Congress did?

After all, they're the ones who made the call, carried it out, and reaffirmed it in a vote.

[newlib]

7. U.S. allowed it to succeed -- the vast majority of Hondurans preferred Zelaya. nt

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

8. Hey, don't take this the wrong way

I'm not calling you a liar, I'm just curious as to what you're basing that claim on, because from the looks of things, even Zelaya's own party wasn't behind him.

[EFerrari]

3. Their claim was more like 64%

and no one will see this revision. Mission accomplished.

[Downwinder]

4. CNN is getting to be as bad as FOX, They have to publish

lies to cover their lies. Pretty soon it just becomes one big lie. Good thing Real News got it on video.

[boppers]

5. 2.8 million, 2.6 million, 2.2 million...

An estimate off by 600,000? That's some bad math.

[David__77]

6. Not much less than in 2005.

Still, it's significant, because it's likely that voting was higher among pro-coup forces, while abstention was largely a conscious affair among anti-coup forces. Many others who opposed the coup voted for Lobo in order to crush the Liberal Party. I personally am "pleased" that Lobo won and not the Liberal candidate - though I will not be truly pleased until the coup is overturned.

[EFerrari]

9. I no longer have the numbers at my fingertips but the election board

had to flip the turnout numbers to declare the election a success.

The latest reports say that the repression continues to be violent. I feel very afraid for the people of Honduras right now. :(

[Judi Lynn]

10. Honduras: reporter threatened over election story

Honduras: reporter threatened over election story
Submitted by WW4 Report on Tue, 12/22/2009 - 18:40.

Ernesto Carmona, the Chilean general secretary of the Investigation Commission on Attacks Against Journalists (CIAP) of the Latin American Federation of Journalists (FELAP), told the Cuban wire service Prensa Latina on Dec. 17 that the life of Swedish journalist Dick Emanuelsson was in danger because of an article he wrote questioning official turnout projections in the Nov. 29 Honduran general elections. Right-wing forces in the country have claimed there was high voter participation, which they say validated a June 28 coup that removed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office; coup opponents said turnout was about 30-40%.

Emanuelsson, who is based in Honduras, wrote an article on Dec. 1 about an interview he held with Rolando Bú, coordinator of the election monitoring nonprofit Fundación Hagamos Democracia (FHD). The interview focused on the discrepancy between the 61.3% voter participation rate given by Honduras' Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and the 47.6% figure the FHD gave based on its own monitoring of polling places; Emanuelsson also revealed that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) paid up to 29% of the FHD's $300,000 budget for 2009.

Bú later charged that Emanuelsson taped the interview without permission, and he threatened to press charges. Emanuelsson said one of Bú's secretaries told him he might "meet the same fate as Father Tamayo"—a Salvadoran environmental activist and priest who has been ordered expelled from Honduras. Emanuelsson thinks he might be physically attacked, according to CIAP. "Things are ugly here, and every day it seems more like Colombia," Carmona quoted Emanuelsson as saying. The reporter left Colombia previously because of death threats. (PL, Dec. 17; Rebanadas de Realidad, Argentina, Dec. 1)

The TSE isn't expected to give its final count until Dec. 23 at the earliest, but on Dec. 19 its website showed a participation rate of 49.4%—with "100.07%" of the 2,297,465 votes counted. The total of blank and spoiled ballots was 155,584, according to the website, so that the total valid votes in the official count represented about 46% of registered voters, far below the TSE's original figure. It is unknown how many voters spoiled their votes or left them blank on purpose to protest the de facto government, but the pro-coup Tegucigalpa daily La Tribuna showed a picture of a spoiled ballot: the voter had written "coup-perpetrating SOBs" across the pictures of the presidential candidates. (Honduras Coup 2009, Dec. 19; La Tribuna, Dec. 13)

http://www.ww4report.com/node/8100