Ruling may further delay count of Puerto Rico's still-uncertified votes in Nov. 5 elections

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico has yet to produce a certified vote tally for a single district almost a month after holding historic general elections. Then on Wednesday, a judge issued a ruling that sparked an outcry and threatened to further delay the certification process as the Jan. 2 swearing-in looms.

The judge, in response to a lawsuit, ordered Puerto Rico’s State Elections Commission to count early votes following ID verification even if the postal address used to request those votes is different from the one in the general voter registration.

“Contrary to what some actors in our society may have encouraged in public opinion, our legal framework in electoral matters is covered with guarantees of reliability, which leave no room for speculation or doubts about the validity of early votes,” Judge Raúl A. Candelario López wrote.

The Nov. 21 lawsuit was filed by a dozen voters affiliated with the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, which won the gubernatorial race, according to preliminary results.

The ruling noted that those voters alleged “their rights are being violated since they requested early voting, complied with all the requirements for it, and their votes are being subject to additional requirements without any legal basis.”

The judge’s decision angered many including Karla Angleró, electoral commissioner for the opposing Popular Democratic Party, one of Puerto Rico’s two main parties, She said the party would appeal Wednesday’s ruling.

In September, Angleró and electoral commissioners from other parties agreed that if they uncovered addresses that didn't match, officials would call people to confirm that they indeed requested an early vote to prevent any fraud.

Angleró and other commissioners had recently requested that the elections commission investigate how more than 40 ballots with different residential addresses were requested from the same P.O. box in the southern coastal town of Santa Isabel.

“We’ve been waiting for weeks,” she told reporters on Wednesday of the investigation.

Judicial officials already are investigating allegations made before Nov. 2 about electoral crimes including people who said they received confirmations for early voting when they had made no such request.

As those investigations continue, workers are certifying ballots with the aim to finish by Dec. 20 or 22, according to Jessika Padilla, alternate president for the elections commission. The aim was to finalize the district of the capital of San Juan on Wednesday, but that was pushed back to Sunday, she told reporters.

Numerous obstacles have delayed the certification process, including an increase in write-in votes and a flurry of errors detected in bedside ballots, prompting all electoral commissioners to agree to start counting more than 60,000 such votes from scratch.

The delay prompted electoral commissioners last week to temporarily halt the counting of ballots cast in a nonbinding referendum also held Nov. 5 on Puerto Rico’s political status so they could focus on election ballots.

Local law dictates the certification process must be completed by Dec. 31.