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On the eve of the primaries on August 9, just hours after the schools opened, then-president of the State Election Commission (CEE), Juan Ernesto Dávila Rivera, attempted to allay concerns and publicly assured that the election materials would arrive at polling stations on time and that the process would run smoothly.
It will be fulfilled. There will be no delays, ”said Dávila Rivera, while the unofficial versions pointed to serious delays.
On the morning of the primaries, it was clear the vote had failed. Schools have only just opened in 45 neighborhoods of the New progressive party (PNP) and 36 del People’s Democratic Party (PPD). The ballot trucks arrived late at night and the officials in the EEC did not have enough time to fill the suitcases with the election materials and supplies with the protective equipment to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Days later it was learned that the EEC had ordered the printed matter late, and that the Printech company was therefore unable to deliver the ballots on time.
Early in the afternoon of the first day, it was decided to stop the vote and continue the following Sunday, August 16, a decision later upheld by the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico, requiring that each district be less, eight hours of voting.
Faced with the chaos, the minority parties without exception called for the resignation of Dávila Rivera. The setbacks open the door to questions about the legitimacy of the vote.
“The decision to end the primary school process was illegal. I disagree with that action and I insist it continues, ” said now-elected governor, Pedro Pierluisi, who took part in the new progressive primaries with outgoing president, Wanda Vázquez Garced.
“They’re breaking the law,” said the outgoing mayor of Isabela and then aspiring governor for the PPD, Carlos Delgado Altieri.
The outgoing mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto, who was also aiming for governor of the PPD, went on to say, without showing evidence, that what happened was a ruse by Vázquez Garced to obstruct the cleanliness of the election exercise and “steal the elections”.
The third of the popular aspirants for governorship, Eduardo Bhatia, blamed his side on the recently approved electoral reform of the setbacks in changing the law in the midst of the electoral process and the elimination of the vice-presidencies in the EEC, which were occupied by the most experienced officials in these processes.
“This is the result of the storming, of the coup that (Senate President Thomas) Rivera Schatz and the PNP have given under the new electoral law,” Bhatia said.
Originally, the primaries were supposed to take place on June 7, but the event was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The electoral reform was signed into law by Vázquez Garced on June 20, despite opposition from minority parties and proximity to the election event.
Since the summer of 2019, Rivera Schatz has been promoting legislative changes, including allowing online voting, expanding the categories of absence and home voting, and including only the first three electoral forces on the board of the EEC, among others. Affairs.
The proposal has also drawn criticism from international organizations, in particular because of the risk of online voting, as there are currently no security systems that guarantee its cleanliness. Finally, the PNP’s legislative majority scrapped this part of the bill and the governor gave way to the new statute, despite the fact that the measure did not have the consensus it had initially demanded.
Dávila Rivera had hesitant views on the initiative. Initially, he warned that the law brought numerous changes and challenges to an electoral process that had already begun, claiming that it needed additional money for the statute to take effect.
The primaries were completed on August 16. Delgado Altieri, of the PPD, and Pierluisi, of the PNP, won the run for governor candidacy.
After nearly three weeks, on September 3, Dávila Rivera left the EEC and shortly afterwards Judge Francisco Rosado Colomer was chosen by the election commissioners as the new president of the institution.
The challenges in the EEG were enormous. In addition to budget constraints, complications from the COVID-19 pandemic and the primaries held unusually close to the general election, the early vote had to be extended to tens of thousands of people who in the past went to the polls on election day. This is an adjustment similar to the one that many jurisdictions in the United States had to make to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spreading caused by the crowding out of people in the voting centers. With one month to go before the general election, the EEC processed 215,857 requests for early votes.
In many states of the US, the large number of ballots in early or post voting was a new problem. President Donald Trump, who was back in the polls at the time, began to discredit the process, encouraging his Republican supporters to go to the polling booths instead of filling out the ballots at home. At the same time, Trump claimed, without providing evidence or grounds, that Democratic opponents were planning a presidential election fraud.
Votes by mail or at home are counted last because a handful of election officials have to process a huge number of votes, unlike how it happens on election day where each voter puts his or her own ballot paper into the counting machines. For this reason, the presidential election appeared to be closed on election night, but as far as they counted the results of the ballot vote by mail and at home, they were mostly in favor of the Democrats, as it was the party that promoted these kinds of votes candidate Joe Biden assured his victory, which was confirmed by the US electoral college in early December.
Trump has not acknowledged his opponent’s victory despite the fact that William Barr, the until recently US Attorney General, indicated that no conspiracy or fraud cases of sufficient volume have been found to reverse the result of the presidential election. Barr was fired shortly after his claim.
At the local level, numerous controversies have also arisen from the appearance of misplaced briefcases and envelopes containing ballot papers without counting and mismatches between the minutes and the voting forms, among other irregularities mainly discovered during the general vote counting.
These irregularities in many cases did not have major consequences, as the advantages for the candidates were large enough to dispel any doubts about the winner.
There were exceptions, however. The most disputed match was that of the Mayor of San Juan, where new progressive candidate Miguel Romero beat Manuel Natal of the Victoria Ciudadana Movement by about 3,400 votes, leading the way for most of the ballot. The advantage was lost with the last group of ballots, including the front vote. Natal claims fraud has been committed, which has been refuted by Romero.
Other competitions have also been contested. In Aguadilla, for example, new progressive mayor Yanitsia Irizarry fights the mixed votes of her popular opponent Julio Roldán, who won by just 40 votes. In Guánica, the EEC has issued partial certification in favor of popular candidate Ismael Rodríguez, who leads the new progressive Santos Seda by just 24 votes. In this mayoral race, however, there were 2,362 votes by direct nomination, the majority in favor of independent candidate Edgardo Cruz Vélez.
A total of 24 municipalities changed orders, many of them in the southwestern part of the country, the area most damaged by the earthquakes early this year.
The election results also generally showed trends never seen in Puerto Rico’s election history. Pierluisi, for example, received only 32.27% of the vote as elected governor. This is the lowest percentage for a successful candidate. Likewise, the candidate for governor of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, Juan Dalmau, obtained 14.16% of the vote, the highest percentage for this community since the 1950s. Similarly, Alexandra Lúgaro, the candidate of newcomer Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana, received 14, 79% of the vote, a higher number than in 2016 when she was an independent candidate. César Vázquez, of the Dignity Project, received 7.13% of the vote, more than what the Christian Action Party, with a similar ideology, got in the 1960s.
The election results also represent a scenario of shared power with the government in the hands of the PNP, with the PPD delegation reaching a weak majority in both the House and Senate. Minority representation in the legislature similarly diversified with the accession of at least six lawmakers from the so-called emerging parties, the election of the pipiolos María de Lourdes Santiago and Denis Márquez, as well as the independent senator José Vargas Vidot.