This week, without notifying the public or the Electoral Commissioners, the State Elections Commission (CEE) changed the Consulta del Elector platform, where people search for their electoral data online, and removed excluded and inactive individuals, the CEE’s Office of Information Systems and Electronic Processing (OSIPE, in Spanish) confirmed in a written statement.

However, the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) validated that the agency has not yet purged the Registry to remove all deceased individuals who remain active for these elections.

Also removed from the platform was data on when voters last cast their ballots according to their General Voter Registry and their municipality of residence, which was previously available. The change follows a CPI  investigation that found nearly 900,000 deceased individuals, excluded and active, remained in the General Voter Registry. Among the active voters for the next election on November 5, there were at least 5,872 people who had died between 2015 and September 2020, among other issues.

Additionally, the CPI saw and validated multiple cases of citizens in which the CEE recorded individuals who were deceased or away from the island voting on the dates of those electoral events. Similarly, voters appeared to have voted despite not participating in the electoral process.

This week, the digital tool’s transformation also coincides with the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) request for the CEE to certify that the electoral records have been purged to remove deceased individuals and those declared incapacitated. 

The alternate president of the CEE, Jessika Padilla, did not grant an interview or answer written questions from the CPI about this issue, which sought to investigate why these changes were made. She delegated the response to OSIPE, which indicated, without attributing the statements to any of its officials, that the change is temporary due to the proximity of the elections and that “after the election, the ordinary Voter Consultation System will be redeployed.” The statement explained that the change was made to “provide voters with guidance on where and when to vote.”

Although excluded and inactive voters no longer appear in Consulta del Elector, the CPI confirmed that some voters who died between 2015 and September 2020 are still active. By examining just the first 588 people on a list of 5,872 deceased but active voters in the General Voter Registry that the CPI found in September within an extract of the roll to which it had access, it was validated that they remain eligible to vote on November 5. This proves that the list of active voters in the Registry has not been fully purged 18 days before the electoral event.

Those years, between 2015 and 2020, are the only ones the CPI could compare because they did not have data on deceased individuals from other years, despite requesting the data from the Department of Health more than a week following the Supreme Court’s decision reiterating that these data are public. The data from 2021 to those available from 2024 were finally received recently, and the CPI is analyzing it.

The CPI noticed the change in the electronic tool while using it as an instrument to follow up on the investigation into irregularities in the General Voter Registry. The findings about the voters were obtained by cross-referencing data from an extract of the General Voter Registry and death statistics from the Demographic Registry that occurred between 2015 and 2020. Then, the deceased voters were searched on the CEE’s Consulta del Elector page to learn their electoral status.

When reviewing this week, the electoral numbers of people who previously appeared as excluded due to death, the system now issues a notice saying: “Verify the entered electoral number, and if it matches your electoral identification card, it means you are an inactive or excluded voter.” 

The information now provided by the tool includes other essential data for the voter, such as the voting center assigned, the address, and the precinct where they will cast their vote, as well as the page and line where their name should appear on the assigned precinct list. It also indicates the voting date, which is November 5.

With the data now offered by the Consulta del Elector tool, it is not impossible to know when the voter last appeared as voting according to the CEE records, but it is not stated explicitly. Now the information is coded, and no legend explains what the numbers under the category mean.

Previously, it was expressed in words if the voter last voted in 2020 or 2016. Now this is expressed in numbers. For example, according to data that the CPI obtained, the number 1 next to the category indicates that the voter voted in 2020, and the number 2 is the code for those who voted in 2016 but not in 2020. The number 3 codes new registrations and 4 codes reactivations.

OSIPE stated that the explicit elimination of this information was supposedly done to avoid confusion for voters who voted in 2016 but not in 2020 and might believe they were excluded from the Electoral Registry when in reality, “they have the full right to exercise their vote.” 

Because the entity’s statements were written, preventing follow-up questions, the reason for this decision is unclear, given that the system indicates whether voters are active in the General Elections Registry even if they did not vote in 2020.

The electoral commissioner of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, Roberto Iván Aponte, said he was neither consulted nor told that the Consulta del Elector tool was modified. However, he acknowledged that several electoral commissioners agreed and had requested that information be added to the platform.

Commissioners from Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana (MVC), Lillian Aponte Dones, and the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), Karla Angleró, separately noted that the removal of fields and data of excluded and inactive individuals was not consulted with them. They were aware of the addition of the voting center field. The electoral commissioner of the New Progressive Party, Aníbal Vega Borges, and that of Proyecto Dignidad, Juan Manuel Frontera Suau, did not respond to calls or messages sent to their phones.

“It has been constantly requested that the information be updated with current data. Never has it been discussed to edit or modify the previously existing fields,” assured Aponte Dones.

He said his party had submitted a request to the CEE plenary to modify the tool, but to allow voters to search for their electoral number with their name and surname to facilitate all procedures and inquiries before the CEE.

The MVC Commissioner noted that it was something relatively simple that would have significantly helped voters, even offering her technical staff to do it. The plenary approved the MVC proposal “unanimously,” but OSIPE never executed it.

The voter cannot perform any electronic transaction, including reviewing their status and voting center, if they lost their card and do not remember their electoral number.

To address this issue, MVC created its consultation tool, which is available online for any citizen who wants to search for their electoral number.

The PPD Electoral Commissioner requested that the database be updated, and a section be included in the tool to display the voting modality requested by the voter, whether early or at home. She said this was not done as she requested. What was done was to include a voting date section.

“It was not what we asked for… the voter can be confused,” she noted.

Aponte Dones said it is “alarming” that changes were made to that platform without consulting the Commission [which is formed by all political parties]. She noted that voters use the tool to learn if they had been challenged, “but now they are not provided with complete information and are asked to call a CEE that never answers the phone.”

This week, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, Steven Muldrow, assigned Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Erbe, Chief of the Fraud and Financial Corruption Section, to lead efforts to oversee Puerto Rico’s voting process on November 5. This type of designation of a District Election Officer for Puerto Rico had already occurred in the previous 2020 election. Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez said on Friday that this action is a positive routine measure but insufficient given the Congress members’ demand to monitor the CEE’s operations.