Citizen Victory Movement Rep. Mariana Nogales Molinelli
By THE STAR STAFF
On Thursday, Citizen Victory Movement Rep. Mariana Nogales Molinelli announced that Jessika Padilla Rivera, the Alternate Chairwoman of the State Elections Commission, has agreed to initiate the ballot recount for the at-large representative position.
Nogales, who was not on the official ballot but ran as a write-in candidate, welcomed the announcement and stated that it serves justice to the voters who opted for that method.
In a conversation with Metro Puerto Rico, Nogales conveyed her happiness regarding the acknowledgment of the disputed votes.
“We are very pleased because the appropriate action is being taken and, most importantly, justice is being served for those who voted for direct nomination and had to undertake that extra effort,” she remarked.
When asked about Padilla Rivera’s comment that, even if Nogales received all direct nomination votes, it would still mathematically fall short for her to secure the 10th place, the legislator took a different stance.
“We believe that the alternate chair’s viewpoint is quite narrow, as those roughly 29,000 votes are solely the ones the machine could read, and there are voters whose cross-checks couldn’t be read by the machine, along with those who didn’t cross-check but wrote their name, which also go unaccounted,” she contended.
Nogales emphasized that there are around 100,000 ballots categorized as not voted, blank, or incorrectly filled, many of which potentially contain valid votes that remain uncounted.
“Moreover, we also have a [quantity] of absentee and early votes that might include direct nomination votes,” she added.
