SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico _ Amid an unprecedented electoral debacle, the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico said Monday it will evaluate claims filed by two candidates from opposing political parties who are calling for all the votes cast at Sunday's suspended primary election to be counted immediately.
The parties involved have until 2 p.m. Tuesday to file their positions to the island's high court.
The joint lawsuits from the two gubernatorial candidates seek to challenge an emergency order from the elections commission of Puerto Rico (Comision Estatal de Elecciones, in Spanish) to keep ballot boxes sealed and voting machines shut down until next Sunday.
The primary was suspended on Sunday afternoon, after what elections commission president Juan Ernesto Davila said was a massive delay in printing ballots at the only ballot-printing facility on the island. The delay meant voters in approximately more than half of the precincts on the island couldn't vote and will have to cast their ballot next Sunday.
However, many politicians and private citizens have since blamed the elections commission for the failures of Sunday's botched primary. Many Puerto Ricans were outraged after arriving at their voting sites, some waiting outside for hours, only to be told they'd be unable to cast their votes. Public poll officers were forced to close down.
Gov. Wanda Vazquez said preparing and delivering the voting materials was the "absolute responsibility" of the elections commission and called for the resignation of Davila.
And even with the emergency order, which was agreed on by the two main parties on the island, dozens of alleged leaked results in the gubernatorial and legislative races began to make the rounds on social media since Sunday afternoon _ a concern the island's highest court said it is seeking to address as soon as possible.
On Sunday night Pedro Pierluisi, the candidate for governor for the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, filed a lawsuit against the elections commission as well as the electoral commissioners of the political parties running the elections, claiming the mid-afternoon suspension was "disastrous" and "illegal."
Puerto Rican Sen. Eduardo Bhatia, who is running for governor for the Popular Democratic Party (PDP), the NPP's main opposition, has also sued for an immediate vote count.
Meanwhile, at least a dozen trucks filled with cast ballots and voting materials are currently sitting in San Juan, awaiting instructions.
"The important thing for Pedro Pierluisi's purposes is that all voters have had the opportunity to vote and vote under equal conditions," Carlos Sagardia-Abreu, one of Pierlusi's lawyers, told the Miami Herald. "And that the votes that were validly cast yesterday have to be counted."
Davila, the head of the elections commission, told local newspaper El Nuevo Dia on Monday that the agency would have been able to successfully run the primary if they had received the ballots even 12 hours before the trucks were sent out to the island's 110 precincts.
"We hadn't raised any flags because we thought we would be able to carry the event forward," he said.
The chaos at the primaries also comes over a month after an electoral code authored by Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz was signed into law by Vazquez and as Puerto Rico experiences a spike in COVID-19 cases.
Hector Luis Acevedo, a professor of voting rights law and leading electoral expert on the island, told the Herald last month that, for decades, Puerto Rico has had a well-respected voting tradition. He referred to the new electoral code, approved less than five months before the general elections, as a "coup" from Rivera Schatz and the NPP.
Acevedo emphasized the importance of the elections commission in the democratic process and its vital role in ensuring that votes are counted in a transparent manner. Acevedo has also served as mayor of San Juan and is affiliated with the Popular Democratic Party.
