:format(png):focal(609x77:619x67)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gfrmedia/GKVOXPSQUNG53OJOQNGLTQE6MY.jpg)
On the eve of the primaries on August 9, just hours before the schools opened, the then president of the State Election Commission (EEC), Juan Ernesto Davila Rivera, tried to calm concerns and publicly assured that the election materials would arrive in time at the polling stations and the process would take place without setbacks.
“It will be met. There will be no delays,” Davila Rivera said as the unofficial versions pointed to serious delays.
On the morning of the primaries, it was clear that the voting had failed. They only opened schools in 45 precincts of the New Progressive Party (PNP) and 36 of Democratic People’s Party (PPD). The trucks with the ballots arrived late at night and the officials in the EEC did not have enough time to complete the briefcases with the electoral materials and the supplies with the protective equipment to prevent the spread of the VOCID-19 .
Days later, it became known that the EEC had ordered the printing late, which is why the company Printech was unable to deliver the ballots on time.
Early in the afternoon of the day of the primaries, it was decided to stop the voting and continue the following Sunday, August 16, a determination that was later endorsed by the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico, which demanded that ensure that each seal has at least eight hours of voting.
In the face of the chaos, the minority parties, without exception, demanded the resignation of Davila Rivera. The setbacks opened the door to questions about the legitimacy of the vote.
“The decision to paralyze the primary process was illegal. I do not agree with this action and I insist that it had to be continued,” said the now-elected governor, Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia, who was measured in the neo-progressive primary with the outgoing president, Wanda Vázquez Garced.
“They are breaking the law,” said Carlos Delgado Altieri, the outgoing mayor of Isabela and then aspiring to power for the PPD.
The outgoing mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto Soto, who also aspired to govern for the PPD, went further and said, without showing evidence, that what has happened was a ploy by Vázquez Garced to obstruct the neatness of the election exercise and “stealing the election.”
The third of the popular aspirants to the government, Eduardo Bhatia, blamed, for his part, the recently approved electoral reform of setbacks in changing the law in the middle of the electoral process and eliminating the vice-presidencies in the EEC, which were occupied by the most experienced officials in these processes.
“This is the result of having taken by assault, the coup that gave (Senate President Thomas) Rivera Schatz and the PNP under the new electoral law,” Bhatia said.
Originally, the primaries would be held on June 7, but the event was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
the electoral reform was turned 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 pushing for changes to the law that included allowing online voting, expanding absentee and home voting categories, and including only the top three electoral forces in the EEC administration. , among other matters.
The proposal also drew criticism from international organizations, specifically for the risk involved in voting online, as there are currently no security systems to ensure its neatness. Eventually, the PNP legislative majority removed that portion of the bill, and the governor gave way to the new statute even though the measure did not have the consensus she herself had initially demanded.
Dávila Rivera had had hesitant positions on the initiative. Initially, he warned that the law involved numerous changes and challenges for an electoral process that had already begun, and claimed that he needed additional funds to enforce the statute.
The primaries were completed on August 16th. Prim Altieri, of the PPD, and Pierluisi, of the PNP, were victorious in the race for the candidacies for government.
After almost three weeks, on September 3, Dávila Rivera left the EEC and, shortly afterwards, Judge Francisco Rosado Colomer was selected by the electoral commissioners as the new president of the institution.
The challenges in the EEC were enormous. In addition to budgetary constraints, complications from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the fact that primaries were held on a date unusually close to the general election, early voting had to be extended to cover tens of thousands of people who, in the past, went to the polls on election day. This is an adjustment similar to that which many jurisdictions in the United States had to make to mitigate the risk in the spread of VOCID-19 that generated the agglomeration of people in polling stations. In fact, with one month to go before the general election, the EEC handled 215,857 applications for early voting.
In many U.S. states, the high volume of early or mail voting was a rookie issue. President Donald Trump, who by then was already back in the polls, began to discredit the process and encourage his Republican supporters to go to the polls instead of filling out ballots at his home. At the same time, Trump alleged, without presenting evidence or grounds, that Democratic opponents were planning fraud in the presidential election.
Voting by mail or at home is the last to count because a handful of election officials have to process a huge amount of votes, contrary to how election day happens when each voter puts their own ballot paper on the ballot machines. scrutiny. Therefore, on election night, the presidential contest seemed closed, but to the extent that they were counting the results of postal and home voting, which mostly favored Democrats, because it was the party that promoted this type of voting, candidate Joe Biden secured his victory, which was ratified by the American electoral college in early December.
Trump has not acknowledged the victory of his opponent although William Barr, until recently the US Secretary of Justice, has indicated that no conspiracy or fraud cases were found with a volume capable of reversing the outcome of the presidential elections. Barr was fired shortly after his statement.
At the local level, numerous controversies also arose over the appearance of lost briefcases and envelopes with countless ballots and discrepancies between the minutes and the ballot papers, among other irregularities detected mainly during the general scrutiny.
These irregularities, in many cases, did not imply major consequences as among the candidates the advantages were wide enough to clear doubts about the winner.
There were, however, exceptions. The most contested contest was that of the mayor of San Juan, where the neo-progressive candidate Miguel Romero defeated by almost 3,400 votes Manuel Natal, of the Victory Citizen Movement, who was in front of the votes during the most of the scrutiny. He lost the lead with the last group of ballots counted, including the early vote. Natal alleges that a fraud was committed, which has been refuted by Romero.
Other contests have also been disputed. In Aguadilla, for example, neo-progressive mayor Yanitsia Irizarry shuffles the mixed votes received by her popular opponent Julio Roldán, who won by just 40 votes. In Guánica, the EEC issued a partial certification in favor of the popular candidate Ismael Rodríguez, who is ahead of the neo-progressive Sants Seda by just 24 votes. In this contest for mayor, however, there were 2,362 votes by direct nomination, the majority in favor of independent candidate Edgardo Cruz Velez.
In total, 24 municipalities changed command, many of them in the southwestern part of the country, the area that suffered the most damage from the earthquakes earlier this year.
Election results, overall, also showed trends never seen in Puerto Rico’s electoral history. For example, Pierluisi, as elected governor, only got 32.27% of the vote. This is the lowest percentage for a winning candidate. Similarly, the candidate for the governorship of the Puerto Rican Independentist Party, Joan Dalmau, obtained 14.16% of the vote, the highest percentage for this community since the 1950s. , Alexandra Lugaro, the candidate of the debutant Citizen Victory Movement, won 14.79% of the vote, a larger amount than in 2016, when she was an independent candidate. Caesar Vázquez, of the Dignity Project, removed 7.13% from the votes, more than the one that obtained the Party Christian Action, of similar ideology, in the decade of 1960.
The election results also pose a scenario of shared power with the government in the hands of the PNP and with the PPD delegation achieving a weak majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The minority representation in the Legislature was diversified, in the same way, with the entry of at least 6 legislators of the so-called emerging parties, the election of the trainees of God of Lourdes Santiago and Denis Márquez, as well as the independent senator José Vargas Vidot.