In June of 2024, Puerto Rico encountered numerous problems while conducting their primary elections. The Gateway Pundit reported that vote counts were reported as lower than the paper counts. Some voting systems reversed totals, while some reported zero votes for certain candidates. The discrepancies were attributed to a “software issue,” according to the Puerto Rico Election Commission’s interim president at the time, Jessika Padilla-Rivera.
There wasn’t much reporting on the American territory and the problems they had surrounding that election. However, it did cause the election commission in the territory to call into question its contract with Dominion Voting Systems prior to the November 2024 election.
In an “exclusive” story published on Wednesday, Reuters claimed that a team working for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard “led an investigation into Puerto Rico’s voting machines,” according to Gabbard’s office and three sources familiar with the previously unreported events.
Reuters reported:
The sources said the goal was to work with the FBI to investigate claims that Venezuela had hacked voting machines in Puerto Rico, but added the probe did not produce any clear evidence of Venezuelan interference in the U.S. territory’s elections. Reuters first reported the investigation.
Gabbard’s office, in a statement to Reuters, confirmed the May investigation but denied a link to Venezuela, saying its focus was on vulnerabilities in the island’s electronic voting systems. Her team took an unspecified number of Puerto Rico’s voting machines and additional copies of data from the machines as part of its investigation, a spokesperson for Gabbard’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence said.
A source with direct knowledge of the investigation confirmed that the event in May did happen, but it was not tied to any specific claim of Venezuelan interference, nor was the scope of the investigation specific to foreign interference. However, there was evidence of foreign involvement discovered, but no country was pointed out specifically by our source.
Hellbound and Down 