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The election commissioners of four of the five delegations denounced Tuesday that the alternate president of the State Elections Commission (CEE), Jessika Padilla, authorized an amendment to the regulations that allows the vote count at the Absentee and Early Voting Administrative Board (JAVVA) to continue after 5:00 p.m., contrary to what is established by the Electoral Code, which requires unanimity for this type of action.

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Lee este artículo en español.

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In view of the situation, they went to the Puerto Rico Supreme Court in an attempt to reverse the decision. Padilla Rivera’s decision responds to a request from New Progressive Party (PNP) Electoral Commissioner Aníbal Vega Borges, who despite several calls to his cell phone, was not available for an interview.

“We all know that the day of the event ends at 5:00 p.m., you disclose the vote by mail, what you counted; the rest, you pass it to the general canvass. This is established by the regulations, the manual that was approved by resolution of the president,” said Popular Democratic Party (PPD) Commissioner Karla Angleró.

“The legislator’s intention (when he created the Electoral Code) is clear, that at this point you don’t change the rules. The PNP intends to manipulate all the processes where they see that they don’t have control,” Angleró added.

Her counterpart from Proyecto Dignidad, Juan Manuel Frontera Suau, told El Nuevo Día that the PNP is trying to “relive” what happened in the 2020 general elections, when in an attempt to advance in the count, oversight measures were ignored with the advance vote and the absentee ballot.

“I think this is a process that we are reviving. We are reliving 2020. In fact, the provision and the manual are there for the reason of avoiding what happened in 2020. In 2020 when the 5:00 p.m. election arrived and the determination was made - by the Commission - to continue the open election of the advance vote by mail and the parameters of the oversight went away because we entered into an unknown process,” said Frontera Suau.

“The election remained open Wednesday, Thursday, Friday until Saturday and the results of the schools were still being uploaded,” he continued.

During a press conference at the CEE, the commissioners said that the alternate president made an erroneous interpretation of the opinion of Judge Raúl A. Candelario López, of the San Juan Court of First Instance, who ordered to continue “uninterruptedly” the advance vote count, thus opening the door for the process to be carried out without the presence of representatives of all the parties in the race. That order, however, would apply only until 5:00 p.m., when the electoral event closes.

“The PNP has already, on three occasions, since yesterday, tried to amend the regulation; on two occasions, the president declared it out of order because it was an amendment to the regulation that the Electoral Code establishes that there has to be unanimity of the five commissioners,” he said in statements to El Nuevo Día from the CEE.

Angleró stated that the four electoral commissioners of the PPD, the Citizen Victory Movement (MVC), the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), and the Dignity Project (PD) “argued against it”.

“She indicated to us that her appreciation of the sentence was that it had to continue, but in order to give an instruction she has to download a document indicating what the determination is,” she said. Let her reflect, analyze and then determine the correct decisions”, she pointed out, anticipating that they would go to the Supreme Court.

In the opinion of PIP Electoral Commissioner Roberto Iván Aponte Berríos, Padilla Rivera is favoring the PNP with her decision.

“I believe that the president’s decision is regrettable and dangerous. With the uncertainty that the country is going through, she is only favoring one political party, violating what the manual says. She signed it several months ago... (She is) changing the rules of the game two hours before the closing of the polls,” said Aponte Berríos.

At the time of this publication, there was no official communication from Padilla Rivera. The appeal for judicial review filed this afternoon by the commissioners against the CEE pointed out that the Manual of Procedure for the Advance Vote by Mail for the Primary Law and General Elections 2024, unanimously approved on September 24, 2024, states in Section 8.2 (20) that “the adjudication of advance vote by mail for the General Elections shall end on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, at 5:00pm”.

Now, the Absentee and Early Voting Sub-Boards designated to adjudicate the votes will stop the process to run ballots through machines. In describing each step, the manual states that ballots that remain unallotted will be placed in a plastic bag sealed with tape and signed by all board members. “They will be identified as Non-Awarded Ballots,” reads the manual, according to the document before the court. Then, an Incident Record will be drawn up and they will be placed in a sealed case, which will be kept in the JAVAA vault for their adjudication in the General Canvass.

“This court, in order to protect the integrity of the electoral process, must immediately revoke the determination of the Alternate President and enforce the rule of law,” said the commissioners before the Supreme Court.

Denouncing this matter during the press conference at the CEE, the MVC electoral commissioner, Lillian Aponte Dones, pointed out that the situation has “one culprit and it is the New Progressive Party”.

“There is a people, there are voters who are asking us precisely for transparency, organization, that we tell them what is happening and instead of giving them elections that were fruitful, that they could trust in those results, we are once again hindering the process,” she said.

“We have been seeing it for weeks, they were arranging everything to get us here today, on three occasions during the advance vote when that count began, it was the New Progressive Party itself that stopped it, they have delayed it to get here today, to lead to induce us to make this decision. This time we are not going to remain silent,” she added. The commissioner said that even this morning, after Judge Candelario’s decision, this situation was repeated.

Aponte made a call to the voters to remain in line at the voting centers and to arrive before 5:00 p.m., if they have come to exercise their right to vote. “We know there is a line, we know all the stumbling blocks you are experiencing in that process, my call is to those voters, to you, is to stay in line”, she exhorted. Likewise, she made a call to the voters to join the vote counting tables.

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This content was translated from Spanish to English using artificial intelligence and was reviewed by an editor before being published.