SAN JUAN — Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the votes cast during a botched primary over the weekend are valid and that a second round of voting will be held Sunday at centers that never opened or did not remain open for the required eight hours.
The ruling was a response to five lawsuits filed after missing or delayed ballots meant that voting occurred in only about 60 of Puerto Rico’s 110 precincts last Sunday.
“Let’s hope that, in the name of democracy, there are no more failures, inefficiencies, errors, or delays. Any other result or deviation from what is stated here would be clearly unacceptable,” the court stated.
Three of the five lawsuits were filed by gubernatorial nominees who demanded that the votes already cast be tallied and made public. A fourth suit by Governor Wanda Vázquez, who competed in her party’s primary, asked that a second round of voting be held at all voting centers that opened late. The fifth lawsuit was filed by a voter represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Maite Oronoz, president of Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court, said that there was no perfect solution to what she called an “embarrassment.”