‘Never in my life had I seen this.’ Puerto Rico to delay primaries amid election chaos

The elections commission in Puerto Rico suspended the primaries on the island on Sunday afternoon amid historic electoral chaos, after more than half the 110 precincts on the island did not receive voting materials and were forced to remain closed.

The agreement between the leadership of the main political parties in Puerto Rico ruled that the voting process will end “in those electoral precincts that opened their electoral briefcases.”

“On the other hand, [in] those electoral precincts where voting did not start at 1:45 p.m., the election will be suspended until next Sunday, Aug. 16, 2020, between the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 pm.,” the agreement says.

The order was released hours after the leaders of the official political parties in Puerto Rico called for the suspension of the chaotic election process, which also led some candidates to make allegations of attempts of fraud by their opponents. Others, including Gov. Wanda Vázquez, called for the immediate resignation of the elections commission.

The chaos and confusion that ensued angered voters and politicians alike, who blamed the Puerto Rico elections commission and demanded an explanation for why ballots had arrived at only about 20% of voting centers halfway through the morning.

But even as countless voters refused to wait in line at precincts that opened late, only the precincts that did not open at all could host elections next Sunday, Aug. 16, according to the party officials.

“Any legal or legislative action we take will be addressed, but it was important for us to take this decision, that we made demands to be able to communicate with voters,” said Puerto Rico Sen. Aníbal José Torres, who is also the president of the Popular Democratic Party.

The commission’s order also prohibited publicizing preliminary results in any voting precinct before the end of the primary process next Sunday.

After an emergency meeting with the local Elections Commission, the presidents of the main parties joined the pleas from some of the candidates for the PDP and the pro-statehood party currently in power, the New Progressive Party (NPP), to postpone the primaries.

“This is the first time that this happens with the Elections Commission, that the materials are never sent,” said NPP president Thomas Rivera Schatz. He added that the person responsible for the election debacle was the president of the Elections Commission, Juan Ernesto Dávila.

“He caused this, no one else caused this. The problem of material not arriving was the responsibility of the Elections Commission. The NPP complied, the PDP complied,” he added.

Meanwhile, Dávila said in an interview with the local Telemundo station in Puerto Rico that he had no intention of stepping down and blamed Sunday’s unprecedented problems on a ballot printing backlog inside the island’s single ballot printing facility.

Sunday’s election included candidates in both main parties who would face off in the general elections in November, including the gubernatorial, legislative and municipal races. Residents in Puerto Rico do not have the right to vote in the U.S. presidential election.

Earlier Sunday, candidates for the island’s contentious gubernatorial race were hurrying to find alternatives while they pleaded with voters outside of the metropolitan area to wait in line and to show up at their designated precincts, despite the long lines that had formed since the early morning. In an island where voter turnout has reached nearly 80% in recent general elections, many voters showed up at their precincts with masks on and stood under the hot summer sun, some with their clothes soaking with sweat.

At 3 p.m., some precincts were still waiting to receive ballots. The delays and lack of explanations that began early on Sunday caused confusion among poll workers, some of whom were turning away voters.

At the Nuestra Señora De La Piedad School in the municipality of Carolina, Ivette Pagán, a precinct official for the PDP, said almost 300 people had arrived and were not able to cast their vote in the primary election. Pagán said that the eight officials in the precincts had been there since 6 a.m. and had seen many elderly voters show up.

She added that some of the voters, who stood in a line that circled the school entrance, were hoping to return next week to vote, despite the health risks due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But even hours before the primaries were supposed to end, it was not immediately clear to many voters if their precinct had been ordered to close or if they should stay in line.

“Never in my life had I seen this. I was born in 1952 and I’ve always voted and I had never seen this,” said Frances Maldonado, a voter who stood in line at La Piedad from Carolina. “They’re waiting for the order to be signed, for them to officially close the school because the ballots never arrived.”

And even in schools where there were ballots, there were issues with the electoral process.

In San Juan, El Nuevo Día indicated that “there were not enough officials to attend the large numbers” of people in some schools and that people had left without voting because of the long lines.

In the San José School in Guaynabo, the ballots did arrive. An elderly poll worker stood at the entrance of the precinct, taking the temperature of voters. However, voters still had to wait about an hour and a half before they could vote due to social distancing measures inside the polls. There was also only one machine that could count votes in every classroom, according to NPP officials.

The result of a ‘coup’ and the end of democracy: Primary candidates react

At least two of the gubernatorial candidates for both major parties on the island said Sunday’s election problems were “a disaster.”

In a press conference, Gov. Vázquez, who was not elected to the post and is running for her first term as governor, blamed the election commission under her administration.

“The poll officials were ready to be part of a transparent, responsible and fair process.… Control over the ballots, their printing and the departure of delivery trucks is the absolute responsibility of the Election Commission,” said Vázquez.

She also criticized her NPP opponent, Pedro Pierluisi, for his “inappropriate intervention,” for speaking with Dávila, the president of the elections commission.

In a statement, Pierluisi said the decision to partially suspend the primaries was “disastrous” and that paralyzing the elections on Sunday was “illegal.” He admitted to speaking with Dávila but rebuffed Vázquez’s claims.

Pierluisi served as Resident Commissioner for Puerto Rico in Washington under former governor Luis Fortuño from 2009 to 2017. Last year, he served a brief seven-day term as interim governor, after then-Gov. Ricardo Rosselló named him as his successor. The Puerto Rico Supreme Court, however, ruled his term as unconstitutional, after more than two weeks of protests that led to Rosselló’s ousting.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rican Senator Eduardo Bhatia and the mayor of San Juan Carmen Yulín Cruz, candidates for the opposing party, the PDP, were in favor of the agreement to suspend the elections.

Bhatia and the mayor of the municipality of Isabela Carlos Delgado Altieri, another PDP gubernatorial candidate, attributed the debacle to the President of the Senate of Puerto Rico, Thomas Rivera Schatz. Rivera Schatz drafted an electoral reform that was approved in June, less than five months before the general elections.

“It is the result of Rivera Schatz and the NPP’s coup. Under the new electoral law, they fired all the vice presidents of the elections commission exactly one month ago,” Bhatia told the local newspaper El Nuevo Día.

Cruz, meanwhile, blamed Vázquez.

“Wanda Vázquez has assassinated the democracy of the people of Puerto Rico,” the mayor told the local press when she arrived to cast her vote at a school in Cupey. “We already live in a colony, the Fiscal Control Board runs over us, we have earthquakes, a pandemic, how much longer will this place endure?”

The Associated Press contributed reporting to this story.