The Puerto Rican electoral commission said it's reviewing a contract with the company providing electronic vote-counting machines after large discrepancies were found in the territory's primaries.
The Associated Press clarified that no one is contesting the results that correctly identified the winners, but many machine-reported vote counts were lower than the paper ones. In other cases, some machines reversed totals or reported zero votes for some candidates, The Associated Press reported.
"The concern is that we obviously have elections in November, and we must provide the (island) not only with the assurance that the machine produces a correct result, but also that the result it produces is the same one that is reported," said Jessika Padilla Rivera, the electoral commission's interim president.
The company said there were software issues stemming from the digital files used to export the results from the over 6,000 machines used in the primaries.
Held on June 2, Jennifer González surprisingly beat Governor Pedro Pierluisi y the primary held by the New Progressive Party. On the other end, Puerto Rico Representative Jesús Manuel Ortiz defeated Senator Juan Zaragoza in the Popular Democratic Party primary.
Both parties reported hundreds of ballot showing inconsistencies. The PNP said there were over 700 errors and the PDP said there were 350. As a result, authorities conducted a full vote tally and audited paper receipts from hundreds of machines.
The island will review the contract before the November general election, where voters are set to choose a new governor and local representatives. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens but are not allowed to vote in the U.S. presidential elections.
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