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Officials from the New Progressive Party (NPP) revealed on Tuesday that they have lodged a complaint against the Citizen Victory Movement (MVC), its electoral commissioner Lilian Aponte Dones, MVC’s mayoral candidate for San Juan, Manuel Natal Albelo, along with Gauss Research Laboratory Inc. and its president, Oscar Moreno de Ayala, for multiple breaches of Puerto Rico’s Electoral Code, Law 58-2020.
During a press conference, Francisco Domenech, NPP campaign director for gubernatorial candidate Jenniffer González Colón, together with NPP Electoral Commissioner Aníbal Vega Borges, presented the complaint, which focuses on the MVC and Aponte Dones’ establishment and operation of a website aimed at gathering personal details of voters. The domain of the website (victoriaenlacomision.pr) is reportedly owned by Natal, and the complaint suggests several violations by the MVC, Natal, and others, including “interference, manipulation, alteration, disclosure or unauthorized access or attack on electronic systems,” as well as unlawful utilization of electoral registry information.
Additionally, the document asserts that Aponte Dones and Natal breached articles 12.8 and 12.9 of the 2020 Electoral Code.
“The MVC’s Electoral Commissioner, Lilian Aponte Dones, accessed data from the Electoral Registry, acquiring information about all voters (both active and inactive), which included confidential information that she shared or disclosed to unauthorized third parties. This act amounted to a disclosure and/or publication of information unauthorized by the Electoral Code,” the complaint alleges. “After unlawfully accessing the data of all voters (active and inactive) from the Electoral Registry, it was taken and/or distributed to unauthorized third parties for developing a tool on the website victoriaenlacomision.pr.”
Furthermore, the complaint notes that “[o]nce the information for the ‘Voter Consultation’ tool was illegally distributed on the website victoriaenlacomision.pr, Aponte Dones facilitated and/or sanctioned the use of a system that jeopardized the security of voters’ electoral information.”
The document continues to state that Natal, “as the registrant of the domain ‘victoriaenlacomision.pr,’ had authority and access over it.”
On the same day, Popular Democratic Party (PDP) Electoral Commissioner Karla Angleró González and PDP alternate commissioner Gerardo “Toñito” Cruz announced they would be seeking an immediate investigation by the State Elections Commission (SEC) in response to a complaint from a voter in Loíza, who reported receiving political material advocating statehood inside an early voting envelope by mail.
“Using voting mechanisms to further ideological agendas is unacceptable,” remarked Angleró. “This is illegal and undermines the supposed neutrality and transparency that the SEC is charged with ensuring. We demand that the SEC conduct a comprehensive investigation into this matter and determine the officials responsible for including partisan material in official voting supplies.”
According to Lydia Esther Osorio Velázquez’s sworn statement, a PDP voter in Loíza, she received her early voting envelope on October 16 as requested. The envelope reportedly contained propaganda supporting statehood.
“I request the State Election Commission investigate this irregularity, as I consider it improper to use ballot envelopes for ideological campaigns favoring one option on the plebiscite ballot,” Osorio stated in her sworn statement.
