A version of this article appeared in The Hill on December 12, 2020.
In 2009 former Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, Kerry Healey, and I helped oversee what was expected to be a violent and contested election in Honduras. Five months earlier, the country had what many viewed as a military coup d’état after the country’s Supreme Court ordered then-President Manuel Zelaya arrested in his pajamas and flown to Costa Rica. But instead, we were in for a dull day, because Hondurans understood that the perception of fairness and transparency is as important as the underlying process.
Honduras has the third-highest murder rate in the world and is home to the violent gangs of Barrio 18 and MS13. In the days following former President Zelaya's removal, tires had been burned outside the presidential palace as thousands of protesters faced off with riot police. Images of military tanks and rock-throwing protesters exposed the level of anger among many Hondurans.
I’d been to Honduras, where I co-founded a non-profit, dozens of times and appreciated how angry much of the population had become after seeing their elected President, known for his swagger and white cowboy hat, photographed in his undershirt at the Costa Rican airport. Zelaya’s supporters felt robbed, and the election was their opportunity for retribution. Which explains why Healey and I, as United Nations observers, began the day braced for violence; there were all the ingredients for a disastrous election.
Instead, we saw mothers holding their children’s hands while waiting calmly in line to vote. In a remarkably organized process, voters showed a photo ID card, left a thumbprint on a page by their name, and were stamped with ink that would last several days to prevent them from voting twice.
After the polls closed, we were assigned to one of the more dangerous areas of the city to observe the counting. In a process open to the public, members of the two principal political parties stood behind the counters, and along with the public, observed the count. After the sun set, because there was no electricity where we were assigned, members of the opposing parties held flashlights for those counting the votes. When the count was called in, they did so on speaker, and as did the officials receiving the count, for the public to hear. Healey, who as a former Lieutenant Governor understood our own election process, told me, “We could learn something from how they do things here.”
That night, we watched the results on national television from our hotel lobby. Zelaya’s party was defeated. Nonetheless, comforted by the way the day had unfolded we violated the UN guidelines and roamed outside the hotel. The biggest ruckus were car horns honking. Weeks later, Porfirio Lobo Sosa was peaceably and uneventfully sworn as president.
I don’t believe for a moment that a single Honduran fingerprint was later reviewed, or that stamping a voter’s hand with indelible ink kept a statistically significant number of citizens from voting twice. I doubt the requirement of a photo ID kept away enough impostors to change the outcome. Counting in public may have been inconvenient but it was notably reassuring. These safeguards left a violent nation that months earlier had their president forcibly removed, reassured in the integrity of the process. It may have been theater, but it worked.
Voter fraud in the United States is all but non-existent, not because our safeguards are flawless but because when millions of votes are involved the math renders altering the outcome all but impossible. Furthermore, it would take hundreds of co-conspirators, spread across tens of precincts in multiple states, to influence the outcome of a U.S. presidential election. Nonetheless, today half of those who voted for Donald Trump believe the 2020 Presidential election was rigged, showing us that perception is reality. The mere opportunity for fraud is enough to leave those on the losing side susceptible.
The idea that our ballots are processed out of site from the public, is unsettling. Emotion works that way. It is not sufficient for professors on cable news to reassure us that the mathematics of large numbers protects the outcome. When a single coffee-stained ballot is “cured” out of view of the public, rightly or not for many it calls into question the integrity of the other hundred million ballots.
The 2009 Honduran election came after a notorious coup d’état, in a country famous for violence. Which makes the peaceful outcome all the more instructive as we re-think our own election process. Counting votes in public and a fully transparent process might be unnecessary as it relates to the outcome, but in 2020 we learned that statistical guardrails are not enough when one party can show evidence of a single signature improperly matched, even if its in a state where millions of votes were cast. Today we know that studies demonstrating that past voter fraud has been inconsequential means nothing to the losing side if they learn 180 votes marked with a sharpie pen might have confused a machine.
Vice President Hubert Humphrey explained that “trust and confidence of the people is fundamental in maintaining a free and open political system.” As we regroup after this last election, we will be wise to not only listen to the statisticians but also consider what can be learned from a surprisingly peaceful election in Central America.