Primary elections in Puerto Rico were thoroughly botched on various counts: (1) officials allowed the elections to proceed even though for weeks many were warning this would not be possible....
...(2) They allowed voting to begin even as many centers had no ballots, and could not logistically get them until late afternoon if at all. (3) There was a suspension in voting midway, which many argue was illegal and unconstitutional...
..Most agree there needs to be some do-over, since so many were disenfranchised. Some argue we must start fresh and re-do the whole thing. Others say that is unfair to those who braved COVID-19 to vote... and to the candidates that were leading the count...
..The truth is there is no good option. The elections were ruined and are unrecoverable. We will never know who would have won in clean and fair elections yesterday. Any vote cast now will surely take into account the fiasco of yesterday, as well as the leaked results...
...It is certainly unfair (and cruel) to make folks vote twice in a pandemic, but it is also unfair that a new round of voters will have new information that the earlier voters were not privy to...
The only positive in this appalling spectacle is that it is a wakeup call to all in Puerto Rico that the elections commission (along with the power company, the dept of education, the dept of labor, and nearly every other state agency in the colony) is in ruins.
As @AnaTeresaToro writes: we are living in a cemetery. Tripping over the dead and buried institutions of the ELA. It's time to build something new.
