Puerto Ricans like Carmen Damaris Quiñones Torres still do not know who their nominees for governor are two days after the island held a chaotic primary election, which was meant to determine who will be on the ballot in November.
Quiñones Torres, who lives in the city of Trujillo Alto, was ready to vote in the Puerto Rico primary on Sunday when she found out that her polling station was closed because she had never received a ballot. Other polling stations received ballot papers hours after voting was scheduled to begin or end halfway through the primary.
These scenes were replayed over hundreds of polling stations on the island.
Quiñones Torres, with the support of the ACLU chapter of Puerto Rico, is prosecuting the president of the island’s election commission, as well as political party commissioners overseeing the primary, claiming their decision to close polls as the primary on Sunday was illegal and unconstitutional.
Commission President Juan Ernesto Dávila, along with party commissioners María Santiago Rodríguez and Lind Merle Feliciano and other officials, are facing delays over early closing of the interview. Other critics have also blamed them for leaving polling stations that eventually worked for hours, arguing that some voters were already away because of the delays.
Dávila told Telemundo Puerto Rico on Tuesday night that his agency was working to reopen polling stations that did not receive votes for a makeup primary on Sunday, August 16. It is unclear what will happen to the polls that went out of polls.
Mayte Bayolo-Alonso, an ACLU lawyer working on the case, told NBC News that there is no “statutory law, resolution or ruling” allowing members of the Election Commission, who are “non-elected officials” are part of an executive agency, “a primary stop or delay.
“Extend it, you can do it because you do not restrict the right to vote, you deliver more. But they can not restrict the date or time of an ongoing primary,” she said. “Even in the U.S., the law makes it clear that you can not close the polling station in the middle of the election process.”
“Doing so causes you irreparable damage,” Bayolo-Alonso said. “What we are trying to do now is reduce this damage and ensure that those who are left out can exercise their right to vote.”
The dirty primary process also sparked a flurry of lawsuits from candidates over primary ballots – including one from Gov. Wanda Vázquez, who was not elected after taking office last year when then-Gov. Ricardo Rosselló resigned at noon from mass protests fueled by a political scandal. Her primary opponent Pedro Pierluisi, who like Vázquez is from the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, is also running as opposition party candidates Eduardo Bhatia and Carlos Delgado.
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Carlos Méndez, president of the House of Representatives, and other officials are urging the commission to release the results of roughly 60 of the 110 areas where voting took place in an effort to remain transparent. Others are urging the commission to stop releasing the results, claiming it could affect how people vote in the by-elections.
On Wednesday morning, the Puerto Rican Supreme Court ordered the “paralysis, control and disclosure of votes in the primaries last Sunday” until the case is resolved.
The ballot papers of those who voted in “locked cages” in a stadium that serves as the election center of the Electoral Commission. They are guarded by police and representatives of candidates running for office, according to Dávila.
Suppress most high attendance?
Bayolo-Alonso said it saw many red flags for the primaries after the Puerto Rican government approved a new election code in June amid the coronavirus pandemic – changing election rules about 130 days before the November 3 general election.
This meant that Puerto Rican voters – known for often a turnout of 70 percent or more – had limited time to learn what counts as a valid vote, and agencies overseeing the electoral process had to work around the clock to to abide by the new set of rules.
“Even by the time the new election code was approved, the Electoral Commission was set to fail,” Bayolo-Alonso said in Spanish. The new code requires ballots to be printed 75 days before an election, but that new rule was imposed on June 20, two weeks before Sunday’s primary. “So they had been burglary since his approval,” she said.
Amid coronavirus concerns, Puerto Ricans living on the island can only participate in a primary if they vote in person, according to the new election code. “And that option was limited by a sluggish process,” Bayolo-Alonso said.
In addition, Puerto Rico’s lockon bans coronavirus closure that new voters register for 95 days. New voters in Puerto Rico can only register in person. “That’s also a kind of voter oppression,” Bayolo-Alonso said.
Now it is up to the Puerto Rican Supreme Court to establish a legal framework that will ensure that the election process does not disappear at the general elections in November.
The Puerto Rican Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case sometime this week.
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