Tag: puerto rico

Voting machine contract under scrutiny following discrepancies in Puerto Rico’s primaries

Puerto Rico’s elections commission said Tuesday that it’s reviewing its contract with a U.S. electronic voting company after hundreds of discrepancies were discovered following the island’s heated primaries.

The problem stemmed from a software issue that caused machines supplied by Dominion Voting Systems to incorrectly calculate vote totals, said Jessika Padilla Rivera, the commission’s interim president.

While no one is contesting the results from the June 2 primary that correctly identify the winners, machine-reported vote counts were lower than the paper ones in some cases, and some machines reversed certain totals or reported zero votes for some candidates.

“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,” Padilla said.

More than 6,000 Dominion voting machines were used in Puerto Rico’s primaries, with the company stating that software issues stemmed from the digital files used to export results from the machines.

Keep reading

Former Puerto Rico Mayor Gets 5 Years After Being Caught In “High Profile Bribery Case”

A former Puerto Rico mayor faces 5 years in prison after he was caught on tape in a “high-profile bribery case”. 

Ángel Pérez Otero was sentenced on Monday as part of a wider federal crackdown on government corruption in Puerto Rico, ABC News reported this week. 

Otero had previously been found guilty of conspiracy, bribery back in March, charged with awarding contract and expediting invoice payments while getting kickbacks of thousands of dollars.

Federal authorities said the scheme ran from late 2019 to May 2021. 

Back in March, the Department of Justice wrote about the scheme: “According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Ángel Pérez-Otero, 52, was involved in a bribery conspiracy in which, from approximately late 2019 through May 2021, he accepted thousands of dollars in cash bribes on a regular basis from the owner of a construction company.”

Keep reading

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Aunt Says Officials In Puerto Rico Are To Blame For Blocked Aid, Not President Trump As Rep. Suggested

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) aunt has slammed her own niece after the congresswoman blamed President Donald Trump for her grandmother’s hardship. Speaking to a Daily Mail reporter this week, the New York Democrat’s aunt said Trump is not to blame for the lack of aid residents are receiving, but instead, officials on the Caribbean island are.

“It’s a problem here in Puerto Rico with the administration and the distribution of help,” said the aunt. “It is not a problem with Washington. We had the assistance and it didn’t get to the people.”

This comes after Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to say her grandmother had been suffering in Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria in 2017. She proceeded to blame President Trump for blocking relief.

Keep reading