Of the 4,490 polling stations used in the last elections, 3,119 — equivalent to 70% — were unable to transmit results from their respective voting centers, according to the State Elections Commission (CEE) in response to a lawsuit filed by the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) under Puerto Rico’s access to information law.

The government spent nearly $1.3 million in public funds on Dominion Voting Systems and an additional $23,379 on Claro PR to enable the transmission of results and provide internet access at polling stations through SIM cards. The payment to Claro, a telecommunications provider in Puerto Rico and a subsidiary of Mexico-based América Móvil, covered SIM card rental and other technical services.

Only 1,371 polling stations successfully transmitted results from the voting centers on election day using the new 4G modems. Officials at the remaining sites had to travel to Permanent Registration Boards (JIP, in Spanish), temporary boards, or the nearest electoral command center to send results through an alternative method.

A review of the Report on Transmission and Disclosure of Results of the 2020 General Elections and Plebiscite by the CPI revealed that at the time, 89% of polling stations ended up transmitting results through the alternative system at the JIPs, not from the voting centers — something the CEE had not previously disclosed. The purchase of new, more advanced modems was meant to fix or at least significantly reduce this problem in the 2024 elections. But that effort failed, with results transmitted directly from only 30% of the voting stations.

CEE Secretary Rolando Cuevas Colón confirmed that in the 2024 elections and plebiscite, 70% of polling stations relied on the alternative Remote Transfer Manager (RTM) system instead of transmitting results from the voting centers.

At a cost of $1,287,500, the CEE purchased 5,500 4G modems for $228 each, plus shipping, arguing that they were necessary to speed up the release of election results from the polling stations on November 5.

The CEE said the transmission problems in the 2024 elections may have been due to reasons ranging from a lack of cell signal to “involuntary omissions” by polling officials. However, the agency said it cannot pinpoint the causes at each location because it does not keep records of why transmissions failed at individual polling stations.

“It is impossible to indicate the precise causes,” the CEE wrote in response to the CPI. CPI asked the new CEE president, Jorge Rivera Rueda, how the agency plans to fix the problem in future elections if it doesn’t know the causes at each polling site, but the CEE had not responded by the time of publication.

Information the Court Ordered Disclosed

The director of the CEE’s Office of Information Systems and Electronic Processing (OSIPE, in Spanish), Eduardo Nieves Cartagena, stated in September 2024 that it’s not unusual for half of the polling stations to fail to transmit results from their voting centers.

The data on these failures came to light through a motion the CEE filed in the Superior Court, in response to a lawsuit the CPI filed in December 2024 to compel disclosure of information about problems encountered by the electronic voting machines on election night.

The CEE’s disclosures confirmed the CPI’s previous reporting, based on interviews with voters and polling officials, as well as an online form in which about 60% of the 1,092 officials who responded said they had problems with the machines and could not transmit results from the voting centers.

The voting machines count the ballots cast during the election. At the end of the process, they generate a final tabulation of results that is supposed to be transmitted to the CEE from the voting stations. A modem connects to the machine via a cable and uses the internet signal to send the results.

Transmitting directly from the voting center is supposed to be the first option. The CEE bought the new 4G modems to make this possible. According to the 2024 General Elections and Scrutiny Manual of Procedures, if transmission from the center isn’t possible, officials must take the results to a command center — either a permanent or temporary registration board — and transmit from there.

Although the CEE can determine how many polling stations failed to transmit from its electronic system database, it admitted to the CPI that it does not collect information on why each transmission failed.

“There are different reasons why a voting center may fail to transmit results. These range from a lack of cell signal to involuntary mistakes by officials, among others. However, the CEE does not collect this data,” the CEE secretary certified in court.

According to technology experts that the CPI consulted, as well as people involved in elections and electronic vote counting, the 70% failure rate remains unacceptably high. While they acknowledge that connectivity and human error may have played a role, they argue that it was a poor decision to rely on a single internet provider (Claro PR) and to skip pre-election transmission tests.

Commissioners Left in the Dark

The CEE leadership never informed the electoral commissioners of the transmission failures on election night, former Popular Democratic Party (PPD) alternate commissioner Gerardo “Toñito” Cruz confirmed to the CPI. Nor has the CEE presented or discussed an official report with the full Commission, said Roberto Iván Aponte Berríos, commissioner of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP).

Both commissioners called it highly irregular that so many polling stations had to transmit results from outside voting centers — especially after spending nearly $1.3 million to upgrade the voting machines to allow in-center transmission.

According to Cruz, the CEE knows in advance that some polling sites are in areas without internet coverage and therefore cannot transmit their results.

“That three-quarters of the transmissions happened using that alternative system? That’s news to me. It’s too high. The CEE needs to review that investment. Paying for something that ultimately didn’t work is absurd, alarming, and concerning. That the machines couldn’t send the results on their own, and I don’t have a report? I’m learning this now,” Cruz said in an interview with the CPI.

Aponte Berríos expressed alarm that, more than five months after the election, commissioners still haven’t been briefed on what happened because the CEE leadership hasn’t submitted a report or opened a discussion in the full Commission.

He said it’s urgent that a report be submitted so the failures can be discussed, understood, and corrected.

“Besides that, whether the [4G modem] purchase was necessary, what was truly indispensable were the pre-election tests. The MVC proposed more than seven kinds of tests, including a key election simulation to avoid technical failures on election day — but the CEE ignored them. Rather than prevent errors, they just crossed their fingers,” said Lillian Aponte Dones, former electoral commissioner for the Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana.

By publication time, the electoral commissioner for the New Progressive Party, Aníbal Vega Borges, had not responded to calls from the CPI, and the commissioner from Proyecto Dignidad declined to comment, saying he was off island on family matters.

This year, the CEE must decide whether to keep or sell the voting machines it rented from Dominion in 2015, which came under government control in 2024, or explore other options for counting ballots.

“Looking ahead to future events, the bidding process for new vote-counting machines must consider all the challenges we faced so that the final contract prevents these situations from happening again,” said the new PPD commissioner, Ernesto González Rodríguez.

This translation was generated with the assistance of AI and thoroughly reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and clarity.