The chaotic gubernatorial primary that was partially suspended over the weekend must be resumed next Sunday, the Puerto Rico Supreme Court said Wednesday night in a highly anticipated ruling.
“The primary process will remain quiet until it recovers on Sunday,” according to a news release announcing the unanimous ruling. The court also ruled that the votes cast by those who were able to cast their ballots last weekend were “valid and non-cancellable.”
The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico also prohibits the release of any kind of preliminary or official results until the makeup takes place primarily on Sunday.
The decision comes three days after thousands of Puerto Ricans such as Carmen Damaris Quiñones Torres were unable to vote in a primary election last Sunday after the island’s Electoral Commission suspended it because it failed to deliver ballot papers to all polling stations on time. for election day.
In a lawsuit filed by Quiñones Torres against the Electoral Commission using the Puerto Rico ACLU chapter, she said she was on her way to vote Sunday when she found her polling station closed early because it never received any ballots. Some polling stations received ballot papers hours after voting was scheduled to begin and others ran out of polls halfway through the primary.
These scenes were replayed over hundreds of polling stations on the island, depriving countless Puerto Ricans of their voting rights.
Mayte Bayolo-Alonso, an ACLU lawyer representing Quiñones Torres, told NBC News she was pleased with the way the Supreme Rica Supreme Court acknowledged the “brutal negligence” of the Electoral Commission during the primary.
The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico wrote in its decision that the Electoral Commission “has not fulfilled its duty to coordinate the overall celebration of a planned primary, to govern in violation of the constitutional postulates and electoral regulations.”
The dirty primary process had caused a flurry of lawsuits from the candidates over primary ballots – including one from Gov. Wanda Vázquez, who was not elected after taking office last year when then-Gov. Ricardo Rosselló fired at noon from mass protests in response to a political scandal. Her main opponent, Pedro Pierluisi, who like Vázquez is from the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, is doing business and so are opposition party candidates Eduardo Bhatia and Carlos Delgado.
The decision of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico responds to all lawsuits, saying that voting can only be repeated in polling stations. “that did not receive election materials like those who received them, but the voting process did not begin.“Polls that did not remain open for eight hours, as stipulated by the Puerto Rico Electoral Code, will be able to restore voting procedures on Sunday afternoon.
“Elections must take place from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., as determined by the primary regulations,” the court said.
Commission President Juan Ernesto Dávila said in a statement in Spanish that his agency “will act in accordance with the determination made by the Supreme Court. It is our duty to ensure the culmination of the primary election process.”
The court ruling explicitly states that “voting will take place next Sunday” in the polling station where Quiñones Torres is registered to vote.
“The fact that the court called our client by first and last name and explicitly guaranteed her right to vote is appalling,” after election commission officials refused to accept that she was “violating her rights,” Bayolo-Alonso said.
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