General elections were held in Honduras on 26 November 2017. Voters went to the polls to elect the President of Honduras to serve a four-year term, as well as 128 members of the unicameral National Congress, 20 members for the Central American Parliament and mayors for the municipalities of Honduras.
The elections were the first after the constitution of Honduras was amended to allow for a president to seek re-election, a controversial development since the mere possibility of changing the constitution to allow for re-election was a primary justification for the 2009 Honduran coup d'état. The sitting president, Juan Orlando Hernández had been the favorite going into the elections, but early results showed a significant advantage for his major challenger, Salvador Nasralla. As the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) slowly announced the vote totals, Hernández gained in the vote counts amid numerous irregularities, leading to cries of electoral fraud and protests across the country. The protests escalated over the next several days as the country awaited final results, and on 1 December, Juan Orlando Hernández's government issued a ten-day curfew to try to control the protests.
Following the elections, both candidates claimed victory. On 17 December, twenty-one days after the elections, Hernández was declared the winner by the TSE, which is dominated by Hernández loyalists. The Organization of American States (OAS), which conducted independent monitoring of the elections, found widespread irregularities in the conduct of the voting and doubted the validity of the official results. The OAS called for fresh elections.
Background
Hernández was seeking re-election, having won the 2013 contest against Xiomara Castro and Salvador Nasralla in a controversial election marred by accusations of vote buying, fraud, intimidation, and other irregularities. This time around, Castro's Libre party united with the Innovation and Unity Party behind Nasralla in the Alliance against the Dictatorship, but concerns over the integrity over the process remained, especially when The Economist revealed a recording of what appeared to be a training session for poll workers from Hernández's National Party that included advocating for vote-rigging in five different ways as part of the party's strategy.
Electoral system
The President of Honduras is elected by plurality, with the candidate receiving the most votes in a single round of voting declared the winner. The 128 members of the National Congress are elected by open list proportional representation from 18 multi-member constituencies based on the departments ranging in size from one to 23 seats. Seats are allocated using the Hare quota.
Presidential candidates
Juan Orlando Hernández of the National Party, who has held office since winning the 2013 election, is the first president in Honduran history running for a second term since the constitution established in 1982, despite the fact that, Article 374 of the constitution of Honduras prohibits both presidential reelection and the altering of the article prohibiting reelection. Manuel Zelaya was ousted by a coup in 2009 for holding the Honduran fourth ballot box referendum, which some have claimed he was using to alter this article of the constitution. Comments he made shortly before being deposed seem to suggest he did believe the referendum would be effective in such a capacity. It is important to note that because Zelaya could not run for office in the 2009 election, this change would have been made after he was out of office. Therefore, Zelaya would have only been able to run for reelection in 2013.
The left-wing Libre and PINU parties formed with the centre-right Anti-Corruption Party the Opposition Alliance against Dictatorship for this election, nominating PAC founder Salvador Nasralla as its candidate. Former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, who was forced out of office in the coup in 2009, supported Nasralla and acted as a political strategist for the Opposition Alliance's campaign.
The centrist Liberal Party nominated former president of the Central American Technological University Luis Orlando Zelaya as its candidate.
Election administration
The President of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, David Matamoros Batson, stated that the election budget is 1.098 million Honduran lempiras. Foreign officials from the United States Embassy, Organization of American States, and European Union conducted election monitoring.