Nearly 200 boxes of uncounted ballots uncovered in Puerto Rico a week after election

Puerto Rican officials uncovered nearly 200 boxes of uncounted votes a week after Election Day in the American territory.

“First, they said they found four boxes of uncounted votes. Then it was 50, and last night 100,” said elections observer Fermin Arraiza. “I get there this morning, and it’s 115 boxes. Now I think it’s 190.”

Elections officials say the votes could change the results of several close races that have already been preliminarily certified, including a mayor’s race in Culebra, where the candidates are separated by two votes. In another mayor’s race in Guánica, only nine votes separate the candidates.

“The whole tragedy here is not so much how it turns out in the end, but it’s that I don’t think anyone in Puerto Rico, after a failed primary and this current process, can really say they trust the system,” said William Ramirez, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Puerto Rico. “We had a large turnout of young people. They voted for the first time, and this was their experience.”

It’s the second time this year that Puerto Rico faced election controversy after primary elections earlier this year forced people to wait for hours in the heat for ballots that never arrived.

The missing votes could affect the territory’s capital, where third-party candidate Manuel Natal Albelo came within 2,000 votes of a stunning victory in the mayor’s race. Abelo believes the new votes coming in should force a recount, while his opponent, Miguel Romero, has already changed his Twitter bio to “mayor-elect.”

“We have been saying for the last week that there had been thousands and thousands of ballots that were not accounted for,” Abelo said. “Now, not only did they admit that there are ballots that haven’t been counted, but the memory cards from the counting machines have gone missing.”

Abelo is also collecting affidavits from voters who claim they were turned away from polls after being told they already voted by mail but had not requested absentee ballots.

“This has created a level of uncertainty that we have never seen before in our electoral history in Puerto Rico,” Abelo said, admitting he wouldn’t go so far as to make accusations of election fraud.

Francisco Rosado Colomer, Puerto Rico’s state electoral council president, said that although the elections were disorganized due to the coronavirus pandemic, all votes would be counted.

“There are cases that have three ballots. There are cases that have 500,” Colomer said.

“Trust in the transparency of the process,” he continued. “Every vote will be counted.”

The election chaos in Puerto Rico comes as mass mail-in voting has caused slow vote-counting in the United States. As of Thursday, multiple states, such as the battleground of Arizona, were still counting votes, while swing states Wisconsin and Georgia were readying for a recount.

Meanwhile, President Trump has filed a series of lawsuits in key states arguing election fraud may have cost him the victory. News networks have called the race for Joe Biden, who has begun the process of putting together his administration while the president disputes the results.