PDP recount could take several more days
By The Star Staff
After completing the first day of the recount process for its presidential election held Sunday, Popular Democratic Party (PDP) officials announced late Tuesday that the process could take up to four additional days.
“This is undoubtedly going to take 3 or 4 days at this rate if there are no challenges to ballots,” PDP Alternate Electoral Commissioner Jorge Colberg Toro said at a press conference.
Out of 350 ballot cases, 236 are regular and 114 were added by hand. On Tuesday, only 43 cases had been counted.
According to the recount results announced as of Tuesday night, Rep. Jesús Manuel Ortiz González had 3,757 votes for 42.75%, Villalba Mayor Luis Javier Hernández Ortiz had 3,065 votes for 34.85% and Morovis Mayor Carmen Maldonado González had 1,974 votes for 22.44%.
“The pattern that existed today is the pattern that occurred last Sunday, which means that the election officials who worked on Sunday did their job well, they balanced the records well, they counted the briefcases well and the most important thing is that today there was no challenge of ballots,” PDP Electoral Commissioner Ramón Torres Cruz said.
“What happened here is, evidently, we have a virtual tie and the count will determine who won this event,” he added.
As for Hernández Ortiz’s request to paralyze the process over an alleged irregularity involving an individual involved in the original vote count, PDP President José Luis Dalmau Santiago declared it inadmissible, Colberg Toro said.
“First, no one is going to paralyze this process,” he said. “The only one who can paralyze this process is the court. No one else. Second, the approach was premature because the referenced person was not for a second alone inside the room counting votes. He didn’t go in. They made an approach of challenge, of paralysis without the person, without the alleged fact having occurred; it is premature.”
On Wednesday, Colberg Toro asked Hernández Ortiz to be patient and respect the recount.