Doubts about the possibility of double voting

The 13,795 envelopes of hand-added ballots had already been verified and awarded during the general count, but in that exercise 6,229 voters who voted in advance by mail were not taken into account, which means prevented checking whether any of those votes were cast twice, recognized the Chairman of the State Election Commission (CEE), Francisco Rosado Colomer.

The 6,229 envelopes in which early ballots were sent that appeared in six suitcases in recent days were not included in the list used to confirm which voters had already voted and thus did not have the voting rights added by hand.

The six sealed suitcases appeared outside the Roberto Clemente Coliseum, in San Juan, where election control takes place.

“Those suitcases were placed there on November 11 in that area and from November 11 they stayed there until December 4, when a third party official (the Puerto Rican Independence Party) found them there,” Rosado explains. Colomer.

So the information on those envelopes, the envelopes that were not entered into the system, was not available when the hand-add exercise was done. If indeed there was or was not, within those 6,229, a double vote, because that entails an extra practice that needs to be done later, ”he added.

He clarified that the hand-added vote will be verified again when the check ends, as it will not stop the jobs left behind at the moment. “We cannot resume control at this point, resume adding manually,” said the president of the EEC.

He stressed that if a double vote is found, it will be brought before the state and federal authorities as it is a crime. “I think even if the outcome does not change, it is responsible to file the complaint if there is a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed,” he stressed.

“But right now I don’t think we have the ‘manpower’ (workforce) to do it, especially at the stage we’re in, because we’ve even added it by hand, we’ve taken it out of the arena (from the colosseum) removed to add more tables “, in abundance.

Rosado Colomer delivered to election commissioners on Wednesday a copy of the security videos taken on December 4 and 11 of where the 6,229 envelopes with early votes were found in the mail.

“What emerges from the videos is that maintenance workers were retrieving the area and locating it there. On December 4, a third officer in the neighborhood is smoking a cigarette and identifying the briefcases, and we meet there. I gave it to the commissioners (the videos) so that they can make a decision, ”he explained.

He ensures that the list against which the possibility of double voting is compared is updated daily with the names of the voters whose ballots arrive by mail. The CEE receives ballot papers by mail until the counting is over as stipulated in the electoral law, but they must be postmarked on or before November 3.

“So far I have to say that no double vote has been submitted, so if we were going to the odds, the probability of a double vote would be based on a very low experience as it has not yet been confirmed that we have found a vote . double ”, he specified.