[Peace-discuss] Heads-up on Puerto Rican gubernatorial election.

[Phil Stinard]

Heads-up on Puerto Rico's gubernatorial election

I’ve known for over a month that Puerto Rico’s November 2 
gubernatorial/resident commissioner election was a shambles, and have been 
waiting for news of the debacle to appear in the US press.  More than one 
month later, a little news is beginning to leak out.  However, since some of 
the reports appearing in the "progressive" press are clearly right-wing 
propaganda, particulary Free Speech Radio News’ report from last Thursday, I 
thought I’d do a little analysis to set things straight.  First, the FSRN 
article:

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>From Free Speech Radio News, Thursday, December 2, 2004:

"Puerto Rican Recount Begins Again

Ballots in Puerto Rico for the governorship are being recounted today.  
However the method is hotly contested.  After the November 2nd elections 
there is still no clear winner, reminiscent of a similarly contested 
election in 1980 when a recount took two months.  Exit polls and newspapers 
gave the nod to pro-state candidate Pedro Rossello Gonzalez. But, Anibal 
Acevedo Vila, who is in favor of keeping Puerto Rico a colony and is 
candidate of the current governor’s party, reportedly took a slight edge.  
The recount was stalled for 6 days after about 150 election workers walked 
off the job protesting the way ballots were being handled. Earlier in the 
week, 20-thousand protestors took to the streets saying the U.S. courts are 
interfering.  Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court ordered the counting to continue, 
while a U.S. district court said disputed ballots should be set aside and 
reviewed by the court."
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When an article says that "exit polls and newspapers" give the nod to a 
particular candidate, one should at least question the bias of the exit 
polls and newspapers.  As it turns out, to the best of anyone's knowledge, 
there were no exit polls conducted in Puerto Rico for that election, and no 
newspapers declared pro-statehood candidate Pedro Rossello the winner.  
Commonwealth candidate Anibal Acevedo-Vila was preliminarily declared the 
winner the next day by the Puerto Rican State Elections Commission, and 
that’s what was reported in the newspapers.  Secondly, the statement that 
Acevedo-Vila "is in favor of keeping Puerto Rico a colony" is clearly false. 
  The goal of the commonwealth party is for Puerto Rico to be an independent 
republic with close economic ties to the US.  Until they can achieve that, 
they prefer that Puerto Rico remain a US territory.

The FSRN article doesn't go into any detail about the nature of the vote 
count controversy.  Puerto Rican ballots allow the voter to cast a vote for 
a slate of party candidates.  Many people cast mixed votes, which is to say 
that they put a mark for the party slate, and then cast votes for members of 
other parties.  This is allowed in many places in the US (I remember that it 
was allowed in Iowa), but the Puerto Rican elections laws are unclear (in 
the past, such votes were counted).  Most of those votes were for the 
Independence Party, with marks for the commonwealth party candidates for 
governor and resident commissioner.  If all ballots are counted, the 
commonwealth candidate for governor, Acevedo Vila won, and the statehood 
candidate for resident commissioner (non-voting delegate to US House of 
Resentatives, mainly a figurehead position) Luis Fortuno, won.  That created 
quite a sensation in Puerto Rico, because it's the equivalent of having a 
President from one party, and a Vice President from another party.  Puerto 
Rico's Supreme Court ruled that the mixed votes must be counted, and 
therefore, it was assumed that after the mandatory recount (for the 
closeness of the results), the current results would stand.

However, the statehood party, wanting their candidate to win, filed a case 
in US Federal District Court to have the mixed votes thrown out.  Since US 
courts have priority over the Puerto Rican courts, the federal judge, one 
Daniel Dominguez, ruled that the Puerto Rican Supreme Court ruling was 
invalid, and furthermore that the recount must not include totals from the 
mixed vote ballots.  After the recount is done without the mixed votes 
(which will surely give the governorship to statehood candidate Rossello), 
the judge will then decide whether or not to count the mixed votes.  In 
other words, a US District Court judge will decide Puerto Rico's election.

The commonwealth party has appealed the case to the Circuit Court of Appeals 
in Boston, which heard prelimary arguments and did not grant any emergency 
relief.  The case will be heard in its entirety beginning this Friday, 
December 10, I believe.  The commonwealth party wants the case removed from 
US federal courts and placed back in the Puerto Rican court system.

In the meantime, other vile and vicious things are happening.  Marta Font, 
one of the people appealing the case to the Appeals Court, said that she 
voted one of the mixed ballots, and she wanted her ballot counted.  The 
elections commissioner for the statehood party, Thomas Rivera-Schatz, 
confiscated the ballots for Marta Font's precinct and claimed that there 
were no mixed votes for the Independence Party and the commonwealth party 
candidates, just a mixed vote for the Independence party and the statehood 
party candidates.  There was a photo in the Puerto Rican press of 
Rivera-Schatz holding up the ballot in question.  In a normal society, the 
violation of elections rules and privacy that took place in constructing 
such a publicity stunt would be repudiated by all, and Rivera-Schatz would 
be prosecuted for elections violations.  But, this is Puerto Rico, and 
instead, Marta Font has been subpoenaed by the Federal Court, possibly to 
face perjury charges for “lying” about how she voted (!).  Of course, 
security was so lax that Rivera-Schatz could have easily stolen or altered 
ballots.  He was involved in voting irregularites during his party's 
primaries earlier this year--he was caught on video moving ballots in the 
trunk of his car.

Today’s report from Democracy Now! was accurate, even though it, too, is 
woefully incomplete:

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>From Democracy Now!, Monday, December 6, 2004:

"Puerto Ricans Protest U.S. Role In Election Recount

In other election news, in Puerto Rico, the candidate narrowly leading in 
last month's governors race is charging the U.S. government with acting as a 
colonial ruler for seizing control of ballot counting in the protracted 
election. This according to a report in the Orlando Sentinel. A Boston-based 
federal judge has decided to step in and overrule Puerto Rico's Supreme 
Court on how to run the recount. Gubernatorial candidate Aníbal Acevedo Vilá 
said the move 'tortures the island's residents and holds them hostage.' Last 
week 20,000 people protested outside the federal courthouse in San Juan to 
denounce the decision of U.S. District Judge Daniel Dominguez. Some 
demonstrators held signs reading 'Stop the federal coup, respect Puerto 
Rico.'"
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I don’t know how accurate the quote from Acevedo-Vila is, though.  I didn't 
see it in the Puerto Rican press, and it strikes me as a little odd and out 
of context.  The news appearing in Spanish in the main San Juan newspapers 
El Nuevo Dia and El Vocero is accurate, and tells all sides and facets of 
the story.  It's a pity that the stories are manipulated during their 
translation and no news editors seem interested in taking the time to see 
that the stories accurately represent what's going on.

--Phil