In charge of transporting the logistics throughout the national territory, the Armed Forces (FFAA) confirmed that this Saturday the process will be concluded with the delivery of the electoral material in the regions of Comayagua, Cortés (San Pedro Sula) and Francisco Morazán (Tegucigalpa and Comayagüela).

The distribution process is moving forward at a steady pace, said Captain Mario Rivera, spokesman for the FFAA.

“The Armed Forces are committed to ensuring that the electoral material will be delivered in a timely manner to each of the voting centers (a total of 5,741) enabled throughout the country,” Rivera said from the operations center in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital.

By land, sea and air, the Army and the Naval and Air Forces distributed 24,858 electoral bags, 8,258 technological kits and 24,858 biometric devices – one for each polling station – in a device that involved thousands of uniformed personnel since last Tuesday.

One of the great novelties of this democratic celebration is biometrics for the identification of citizens, in order to avoid possible fraud.

The president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Cossette López, advocated for the proper use of the biometric system (fingerprint reader) to guarantee the transparency of the primary and internal elections.

In addition to urging citizens to confront any attempt at fraud, the governing body of the electoral processes in Honduras called on the Public Prosecutor’s Office to act ex officio against those who plan to attack the use of biometric devices.

The three members of the CNE, one for each party participating in the contest, stressed that Hondurans are the main observers of the date with the ballot boxes, outside of the accredited national and international observation missions. By majority vote, the electoral council endorsed midweek the proposal of councilor Marlon Ochoa, of the ruling Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre), that the minutes without biometric validation will be retained and will not be counted in the first preliminary result of the elections.

Ochoa stressed that the results of the closing minutes of the voting stations that ignore biometrics will not be added.

He explained that these records will be shared with the parties that are running in the primaries, at the same time that they are received by the CNE and made available to the public in a repository after the second cut, to be held in a public session on the same Sunday.

A little more than 5.8 million Hondurans, out of a population of 10 million, are called to the polls, which are attended by the three major political forces: Libre and the traditional National and Liberal organizations, the main opposition parties.

From the contest on March 9, the official candidates for the presidency, deputies and mayors for the general elections on November 30 will emerge, to which the minority parties will join.

More than a thousand people were accredited as national observers, in addition to several international observation missions, including one from the Organization of American States.

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