By The Star Staff
Rep. José “Conny” Varela Fernández, who chairs the House Electoral Affairs Committee, strongly condemned on Monday the reported errors associated with the reading of voters’ marks on ballots, which resulted, less than two days before the general elections, in an instruction to voters from the State Elections Commission (SEC) to change the way ballots are marked.
“Since the problems occurred with the transmission of the results of the primaries in June, I summoned the alternate chairperson of the SEC, Jessika Padilla Rivera, to several public hearings to explain how she would guarantee that the electronic counting machines would work correctly on the day of the general elections. Padilla Rivera repeatedly assured me that the problems with the machines had been resolved and that we could trust the results,” Varela said. “Now, when the counting of early votes has already begun, and with less than 48 hours left before the polls open, it turns out that the electronic counting machines are not reading the marks they are supposed to read. The SEC at the last minute wants to change the way to mark the ballot. This is a gross incompetence of both the SEC and Dominion, which has created a very dangerous situation for the country’s electoral process.”
On Monday, Padilla Rivera again urged voters to completely blacken the boxes when marking their vote, in order to ensure that the optical counting machines can correctly read the voter’s intention.
On Sunday afternoon, it was revealed that some of the electronic vote counting machines were not correctly reading the marks on the early-voting ballots, so the SEC alternate chairwoman urged voters to completely fill in the boxes provided for making the marks instead of marking them with an X.
“This last-minute change can cause a lot of confusion among voters, who have always been told to vote by making crosses in the space provided for making the mark,” the District 32 (Caguas) lawmaker and deputy House speaker said. “We cannot assume that, in such a short time, all voters will receive the necessary information to know that they now have to fill in the entire space. If they do not, we could end up with a preliminary certification on election night that does not reflect the true results, which would create suspicion and unease.”
“The contract between the SEC and Dominion requires that the electronic counting machines be able to read a mark the size of one square millimeter,” Varela continued. “To explain it in simple terms, if you uncap the marker that the SEC gives you, the width of the material that makes the mark is one millimeter. It should be enough for the voter to make the cross that he has always known how to make. Suppose the machines cannot read those crosses. In that case, they violate both the contract and the certifications required by the HAVA law [Help America Vote Act]. Suppose this problem continues on the day of the general election. In that case, Dominion must return all the money that was paid to it this year for the use of the machines in this election.”
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