During Puerto Rico’s primary election on Tuesday, voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems allegedly tipped off hundreds of votes, prompting the U.S. territory to reevaluate its agreement with the U.S.-based company, according to a report from the Associated Press ( AP ).
The time president of Puerto Rico’s elections commission, Jessika Padilla Rivera, was cited by The AP as saying that the error” stemmed from a software problem that caused machines supplied by Dominion Voting Systems to wrong estimate vote totals.” According to the report, Dominion confirmed that” program problems stemmed from the digital data used to trade outcomes from the machines.”
The primary was held so the Popular Democratic Party, which supports keeping the region’s current position as a country, and the New Progressive Party, which supports Puerto Rican independence, may choose their individual applicants for the island’s presidential race. At least 6, 000 Dominion Voting Systems models were officially used in the main despite no one contesting the results of the competition.
According to the AP, “both parties reported hundreds of ballots that showed unfavorable results, with the PNP reporting over 700 errors and the PPD pointing to about 350 discrepancies.”
According to the report, the elections commission audited the paper receipts from the ballot-tabling machines.
The issue is that, despite what reports say, we have elections in November, we must provide the island with assurance that the outcome will be accurate as well as that it will be reported, Padilla reportedly said.
” We cannot allow the public’s confidence in the voting process to continue to be undermined as we approach the general elections”, urged José Varela, the vice president of Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives, according to the report. In addition, a plan to avoid a similar scenario was reportedly suggested by Puerto Rico’s Ombudsman Edwin Garciano in November.
” Predictable circumstances, which are well known to the public, cannot be addressed by improvisation and in a rush”, GarcÃa Feliciano reportedly said.
In a post on X, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy expressed his concerns about the issues, saying that if he won, he would “require paper ballots.”
What transpires in places where there is no paper trail? Kennedy posed the question in a X-post. ” US citizens need to be aware that every vote cast was counted and that no election was hacked,” he said. To prevent electronic interference with elections, we must return to paper ballots.
” My administration will require paper ballots and we will guarantee honest and fair elections”, Kennedy’s post continued.
Billionaire and X owner Elon Musk echoed Kennedy’s post, adding” We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high”.
The Federalist’s Brianna Lyman is a correspondent for elections.
