Marlon Ochoa, one of the three counselors of the National Electoral Center (CNE) of Honduras, denounced on Sunday flaws in the security of the electronic system for transmitting the results of the general elections held on November 30. Ochoa, representing the left-wing Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre), appeared before the media without the other two members of the electoral commission, who represent the Liberal and National parties. Specifically, Ochoa denounced a change in the security code of two modules of the system used for vote counting. The company responsible for the preliminary transmission of votes recognized that a variation occurred in the 'hash' (label or numeral) in the module for disseminating electoral results, although it assured that the source code 'had not been modified'. According to Ochoa, the 'hash' serves to ensure that the software of the counting system has not been altered. Therefore, if the 'hash' changes, it means that something in the modules of the results transmission system (TREP) was modified, which can generate doubts about the reliability of the vote count. 'The irregularities I share with you today are in addition to those already found last Thursday, and every day we are finding new ones,' Ochoa emphasized to journalists at the CNE headquarters in Tegucigalpa. In fact, Ochoa explained that the verification of the operation time of the transmission systems showed that many had been 'in operation for less than six days' and 'some, even, less than five minutes'. For this reason, he clarified, 'there is no certainty that the sealed systems that remain in operation are indeed the ones that have been used in the last seven days' during the vote count. Ochoa stated that the lack of confidence in the electoral results stems from the impossibility of the CNE to guarantee that the electoral records have been processed by the same software that was designated on election day. This situation 'compromises the validity of the results generated from these systems' and exposes the CNE to 'potential administrative, civil, and criminal liabilities', for which he proposed that the Public Ministry (Prosecutor's Office) open an investigation. The counselor cited Article 282 of the Electoral Law, which establishes that the software cannot be modified without the approval of the plenum, and warned that a change in the source code 'without the authorization of the plenum' would imply access and modifications to the already sealed system. He also criticized the lack of transparency and the absence of updates on the results dissemination page for 36 hours, describing the process as 'the most manipulated and least credible elections in the country's democratic history'.
