TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — More than a week after Hondurans voted to elect a new president, results continue to trickle in as complaints grow about the slow process and allegations of irregularities by the three top candidates.
The election to pick a new president and Congress was held on Nov. 30 and as of Monday, 88% of the ballots have been counted.
The two leading candidates are Nasry Asfura, of the conservative National Party, who has 40.21% of the votes and Salvador Nasralla, of the also conservative Liberal Party, who has 39.49%.
Rixi Moncada, who ran for the ruling social democrat LIBRE, or Liberty and Re-foundation party, is in third place with 19.28% of the votes.
Moncada on Sunday raised questions about the tally and said the elections should be annulled.
“LIBRE does not recognize the elections held under the interference and coercion of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the allied oligarchy that have attacked the Honduran people with an ongoing electoral coup,” Moncada said.
Days before the election, U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed Asfura and announced his pardon of ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández, who belongs to the same party and last year was sentenced to 45 years in a U.S. prison for helping move tons of cocaine.
The website Honduran electoral authorities set up to share vote tallies with the public has crashed several times since going online, leaving Hondurans with uncertainty about the process.
Eduardo Fuentes, election director of the National Electoral Council, asked Hondurans for patience and on Monday told The Associated Press that the vote is being done in the correct way and according to the law, which gives the council 30 days to complete the count.
He blamed the website’s technical problems on the Colombian company that manages it.
Fuentes said that following the election, the vote-counting process occurs in several stages, each requiring varying amounts of time.
He said that after voting concludes, all polling place tally sheets must be scanned and sent digitally to the council's central collection center to begin processing and tabulating results. Preliminary results are then released on election night through the Preliminary Electoral Results Transmission, or TREP, website.
The council then addresses the tally sheets that were scanned but could not be transmitted to the council due to a bad internet connection. After that, officials then process the tally sheets that could neither be scanned nor sent digitally because of lack of electricity and internet connection.
Those sheets must then be physically sent to the council. This is where the vote count is at the current moment, Fuentes said.
“The tally sheets are extracted from all boxes, scanned, and incorporated to the official count. We’re at that stage now, which began,” Sunday, Fuentes added.
That process is very important — it will process 7,776 tally sheets with issues, of which 2,294 are for a presidential candidate and could make a significant difference between the two top candidates, who are now separated by about 20,000 votes. The other 5,482 tally sheets were for congress people and mayors.
If after this stage, the margin between Nasralla and Asfura narrows, a special recount will decide the election.
Fuentes said that during the special recount all tally sheets with inconsistencies, errors, or those that were not sent back because of electricity or internet problems or both will be processed.
“We will determine which ballot boxes go to the special recount, and those will undergo a new count with a new tally sheet issued,” he said.
“Once the special recount is completed, the general count concludes and a declaration of results is issued,” he said.
The time required for this entire process will depend on the number of tally sheets needing correction but could take seven to eight days,” he said.
If there is a special recount, the CNE will establish 150 Special Verification Boards, each comprised of one representative from each party, one from the electoral council, an international observer and a representative from an auditing company. Additionally, prosecutors from the Special Electoral Crimes Prosecutor’s Office will be requested to attend, and cameras will always be present.
The recount will be conducted continuously, 24 hours a day, with two 12-hour shifts, Fuentes said.
Supporters of the ruling party LIBRE, Liberty and Refoundation, cheer their presidential candidate Rixi Moncada, center top, at the party's headquarters in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
Ana Paola Hall, president of the National Electoral Council, explains the pauses in the result reporting of Sunday's election to reporters in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
Screens show the results of the ongoing vote count of Sunday's presidential election at a National Electoral Council facility in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
TOKYO (AP) — A powerful 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck off northern Japan late Monday, injuring 23 people and triggering a tsunami in Pacific coast communities, officials said. Authorities warned of possible aftershocks and an increased risk of a megaquake.
The Japanese government was still assessing damages from the tsunami and late-evening quake, which struck at about 11:15 p.m. in the Pacific Ocean, around 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the coast of Aomori, the northernmost prefecture of Japan’s main Honshu island.
“I’ve never experienced such a big shaking,” convenience store owner Nobuo Yamada told the public broadcaster NHK in the Aomori prefecture town of Hachinohe, adding that “luckily” power lines were still operating in his area.
A tsunami of up to 70 centimeters (2 feet, 4 inches) was measured in Kuji port in Iwate prefecture, just south of Aomori, and tsunami levels of up to 50 centimeters struck other coastal communities in the region, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said 23 people were injured, including one seriously. Most of them were hit by falling objects, NHK reported, adding that several people were injured in a hotel in Hachinohe and a man in Tohoku was slightly hurt when his car fell into a hole.
The meteorological agency reported the quake's magnitude as 7.5, down from its earlier estimate of 7.6. It issued an alert for potential tsunami surges of up to 3 meters (10 feet) in some areas and later downgraded to an advisory.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara urged residents to go to higher ground or seek shelter until advisories were lifted. He said about 800 homes were without electricity, and that the Shinkansen bullet trains and some local lines were suspended in parts of the region.
Nuclear power plants in the region were conducting safety checks, Kihara said. The Nuclear Regulation Authority said about 450 liters (118 gallons) of water spilled from a spent fuel cooling area at the Rokkasho fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori, but that its water level remained within the normal range and there was no safety concern.
About 480 residents were taking shelter at the Hachinohe Air Base, and 18 defense helicopters were mobilized for a damage assessment, Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said.
About 200 passengers were stranded for the night at New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido, NHK reported.
The meteorological agency issued a caution about possible aftershocks in the coming days. It said there is a slight increase in risk of a magnitude 8-level quake and possible tsunami occurring along Japan's northeastern coast from Chiba, just east of Tokyo, to Hokkaido. The agency urged residents in 182 municipalities in the area to monitor their emergency preparedness in the coming week.
Satoshi Kato, a vice principal of a public high school in Hachinohe, told NHK that he was at home when the quake struck, and that glasses and bowls fell and smashed into shards on the floor.
Kato said he drove to the school because it was designated an evacuation center, and on the way he encountered traffic jams and car accidents as panicked people tried to flee. Nobody had yet come to the school to take shelter, he said.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said in brief comments to reporters that the government set up an emergency task force to urgently assess the extent of damage. “We are putting people’s lives first and doing everything we can,” she said.
Later, she urged residents in the region to pay attention to the latest information from local municipalities. “Please be prepared so you can immediately evacuate as soon as you feel a tremor."
The quake struck about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Hachinohe, and about 50 kilometers (30 miles) below the sea surface, the meteorological agency said.
It was just north of the Japanese coast that suffered the magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami in 2011 that killed nearly 20,000 people and destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
“You need to prepare, assuming that a disaster like that could happen again," the meteorological agency's earthquake and volcano division official Satoshi Harada said.
At 6:20 a.m. on Tuesday morning, authorities lifted all tsunami advisories for the Pacific coastline in northern Japan, NHK said.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported another earthquake, with a magnitude 5.1, early on Tuesday, about 122 kilometers (76 miles) south of Honcho, at a depth of 35 kilometers. No other details were immediately available.
Smoke rises from the site of a fire in Aomori, northern Japan Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025, following a powerful earthquake on late Monday. (Kyodo News via AP)
Evacuees get ready to return home as a tsunami advosory has been lifted in Hidaka town, northern Japan Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025, following a powerful earthquake on late Monday. (Kyodo News via AP)
Papers are scattered on the floor at an office in Hakodate, Hokkaido, northern Japan Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025, following a powerful earthquake on late Monday. (Kyodo News via AP)
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara speaks during a news conference at the prime minister's office in Tokyo early Tuesday, Dec. 9, following a strong earthquake in northeastern Japan. (Kyodo News via AP)
Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi speaks to reporters at the prime minister's office in Tokyo after a strong earthquake struck northeastern Japan. (Kyodo News via AP)
A tsunami warning is displayed on a television in Yokohama, near Tokyo, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025, after a strong earthquake hits off Japanese northern coast, tsunami alert issued. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
