Hondurans Vote After Tumultuous Race Xiomara Castro, the wife of President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in a coup four years ago, is the candidate of a new left-wing party challenging the political and business elites in one of Latin America's poorest nations. The race between her and Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of the National Congress, is too close to call, and has been dominated by personality and ideology rather than specific proposals. Over 20 percent of the electorate was undecided before the vote, according to estimates, and voting was extended for an hour because of high turnout. Ms. Castro, 54, is running as a candidate of change, renewing her husband's promise to rewrite the Constitution to give the country's impoverished majority a greater role. Mr. Hernández, 45, of the ruling National Party, has focused on security based on a new military police force that began to patrol the rutted streets of the country's most murderous neighborhoods five weeks ago. Of the six other candidates, only Salvador Nasralla, a television host, and Mauricio Villeda of the Liberal Party have enough support to pull off an upset. After the polls closed, activists flocked to watch the vote count. "I want to see that it's transparent," said Olga Check, 42, an accountant from central Tegucigalpa. She stood with a couple dozen other people as each ballot was held up for display and placed on the correct pile. Iris Medina, 40, a stay-at-home mother voting in Comayagüela, near the capital, Tegucigalpa, early Sunday said that this election was different. "There are a lot more people who have entered into politics, and we think maybe they can offer us something new," she said. She declined to say whom she had voted for. The campaign's spending levels were unheard-of in the past. The leading candidates have held giant rallies, flooded television ad space and blanketed cities with posters. With no campaign finance oversight, it is unclear how the candidates - particularly Mr. Hernández, with the largest presence - are paying for it all. Behind the musical beats and noisy flag-waving at the rallies, there has been violence and intimidation. The national university said last week that 17 members of Ms. Castro's party, known as Libre, and 16 people from the two traditional parties had been killed since May 2012. Human rights groups reported on Sunday that two rural organizers, both Libre activists, were ambushed and killed on Saturday night on their way home from electoral training in Cantarranas, a municipality in the central department of Francisco Morazán. Both of the victims were involved in a struggle over land rights. The election is being closely monitored by some 750 international observers and 15,000 national monitors, including thousands of students hired by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which organized the elections. "There are lots of people who have the will to go and vote and, for the first time in their lives, have the feeling that their vote really can change something," said Ulrike Lunacek, the leader of the European Union's electoral observation mission. The polling places are supposed to be staffed by members of all nine political parties, but observers warned that the smaller parties would not be able to fill all their spaces, raising the concern that they might sell them to larger parties, said Adán Palacios, a former election official. Still, election observers believe that the final count for president will be accurate despite "the general perception of fraud," said Salvador Romero, the resident director in Honduras for the National Democratic Institute, an organization financed by the United States" Democratic Party. There are six other candidates for president and no second round, so whoever wins will have a weak mandate: No one is likely to take more than 40 percent of the vote. Hondurans are also choosing 128 members of Congress from among nine parties, and the new president will face a highly fractured legislature. In a sign of concern over the unfettered flow of funds, the Center for Documentation of Honduras - known by its Spanish acronym, Cedoh - is preparing a study on campaign spending, including an effort to determine how drug traffickers may be influencing local campaigns. The National Democratic Institute is also sponsoring a survey to gauge vote-buying practices. For the country's 5.3 million or so voters, the cluttered ballots with rows of candidates present a very different picture from the past. The National and Liberal Parties have dominated Honduran politics for more than a century, alternating with each other and with periods of military rule. María Jose Agüero, 20, a philosophy student, said she was voting for Mr. Nasralla, who has run an anticorruption campaign. "There are candidates giving money to people for their vote, and that's extremely inappropriate," Ms. Agüero said. Nicholas Phillips reported from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico City.