According to the commission’s interim president Jessika Padilla Rivera, Puerto Rico’s elections commission began evaluating its Dominion Voting Systems contract after software glitches miscalculated vote totals in the June 2 primaries.
Following the contentious primaries on the island, hundreds of anomalies were found, prompting Puerto Rico’s elections commission to announce on Tuesday that it is evaluating its contract with a US electronic voting company.
The Dominion Voting Systems-supplied machines were miscalculating vote totals due to a software glitch, according to the commission’s interim president, Jessika Padilla Rivera.
While the June 2 primary results that accurately identify the winners are uncontested, in several situations, the machine-reported vote totals were less than the paper ones, and in other cases, the machine-reported totals reversed or indicated zero votes for certain candidates.
“The concern is that we obviously have elections in November, and we must provide the (island) not only with the assurance that the machine produces a correct result but also that the result it produces is the same one that is reported,” Padilla said.
In Puerto Rico’s primaries, over 6,000 Dominion voting devices were utilized. According to the business, software problems were caused by the digital files that were used to export the machines’ results.
The elections commission and Dominion have a contract that expires on June 30.
The vice president of the House of Representatives for Puerto Rico, José Varela, requested that Padilla attend a public meeting on Thursday to discuss the problems.
“We cannot allow the public’s confidence in the voting process to continue to be undermined as we approach the general elections,” he said.
The issues brought up memories of the island’s disastrous 2020 primary, where the government was forced to delay voting in a first for the U.S. territory due to a shortage of ballots in some places.
The Popular Democratic Party, which favors the island’s territorial status, and the pro-statehood New Progressive Party selected their governor candidates in Puerto Rico’s primary elections on June 2.
The congressional representative for Puerto Rico, Jenniffer González, unexpectedly defeated Governor Pedro Pierluisi in the New Progressive Party primary. Meanwhile, in their Popular Democratic Party primary, Rep. Jesús Manuel Ortiz of Puerto Rico defeated Sen. Juan Zaragoza.
Both parties alleged that hundreds of ballots had produced erroneous results; the PPD pointed to over 350 inconsistencies, while the PNP reported over 700 inaccuracies. Voters’ ballots for governor, mayor, and resident commissioner were impacted by these errors.
The elections commission inspected the paper receipts from hundreds of ballot-counting devices and performed a complete vote tally in response to the disparities.
Puerto Rico’s Ombudsman, Edwin García Feliciano, described the event as a “threat” to the island’s electoral system and urged the governor and the federal control board, which manages the island’s finances, to devise a strategy to ensure a better result in the next general elections.
“All planning is based on resolving emergencies, including unlikely ones,” García Feliciano said. “But predictable circumstances, which are well known to the public, cannot be addressed by improvisation and in a rush.”
In November, the island will host a general election where voters will select a new governor as well as local representatives. Even though they are citizens of the United States, Puerto Ricans are not permitted to cast ballots in presidential elections.
Previously, a so-called computer “glitch” in the voting machines flipping votes during the 2020 US Elections caused a major controversy. The source and ownership of the voting machines used in the elections became an urgent issue due to fears that hackers, whether foreign or domestic, might tamper with the mechanics of the voting system. However, GreatGameIndia found that the vendors, and not hackers, may have been behind the rigging.
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