Puerto Rico’s elections commission announced Tuesday that it is reviewing its contract with Dominion Voting Systems after “hundreds of discrepancies” in vote totals were discovered following the island’s primary elections.
Jessika Padilla Rivera, the commission’s interim president, said the problem stemmed from a “software issue” that caused Dominion voting machines to incorrectly tabulate vote totals.
“The concern is that we obviously have elections in November, and we must provide the (island) not only with the assurance that the machine produces a correct result, but also that the result it produces is the same one that is reported,” Padilla said.
More than 6,000 Dominion voting machines were used in Puerto Rico’s primary elections, with the company blaming software issues caused by the digital files used to export results from the machines.
However, José Varela, vice president of Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives, called for Padilla to appear at a public hearing Thursday to address the issues.
“We cannot allow the public’s confidence in the voting process to continue to be undermined as we approach the general elections,” he said.
The problems called to mind the well-publicized incident in Antrim County of a Dominion Voting machine “mistakenly” counting thousands of extra votes for Biden instead of Trump.
In April last year, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems nearly $800 million to avert a trial in the voting machine company’s lawsuit alleging Fox promoted lies about Dominion’s role in allegedly rigging the 2020 presidential election for Biden.
Dominion had sued Fox for $1.6 billion, arguing that the top-rated news outlet damaged the company’s reputation by peddling “conspiracy theories” that claimed its equipment switched votes from Trump to Biden.
