Still more on the election

Cross posted on Political Arguments.

With all due respect to the newspaper of record, the New York Times editorial gets afew facts wrong about the Puerto Rican electoral system. The editors write:

This time the focus has been not on chads, but on an extra mark on each disputed ballot, which Mr. Rosselló says calls into question the intent of the voters. Each of those voters marked the symbol of the small Independence Party and also placed an X beside the name of Mr. Acevedo-Vilá. This may seem a reasonable claim of overvoting - outside Puerto Rico.

Actually, Puerto Rican voting rules are fairly clear on acceptable voting practices. At the polls, Puerto Ricans receive three paper ballots: one for Commonwealth-wide candidates (governor and resident commissioner), one for legislative candidates (some of which are single-district and some who are party lists), and one for municipal candidates (mayor and municipal council).

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There are three ways to vote on each ballot:

1. "integral" vote, whereby the voter makes a single mark immediately below a party's emblem, which has the effect of voting for the straight party ticket;


2. "mixed" vote, whereby the voter makes a mark immediately below a party's emblem, and one or more marks besides the name of another candidate, which has the effect of voting for the party's ticket except for the positions in which the voter crossed party lines; and


3. "by candidacy" vote, whereby the voter makes no mark below a party's emblem, and one or more marks besides the names of one or various candidates.

The only ballots in controversy were the Commonwealth-wide ballots. By making a mark under the pro-Independence (PIP) party's ticket and one each besides the names of the pro-Commonwealth (PPD) party's candidates for governor (Acevedo Vilá) and resident commissioner (Roberto Pratts), some voters cast a mixed vote for the PIP party and for the PPD candidates. The problem is that, since those were the only two candidates on that ballot, these voters, in effect, did not vote for any PIP candidates. The mark under the PIP insignia was merely symbolic, but the intention of the voter was clear. Under Puerto Rican law, which doesn't restrict how many times one may cross party lines in a mixed vote, this was a valid ballot, which is what the Puerto Rico Supreme Court decided last month.

It is also, I should note, a fairly common way of voting in all three ballots, especially when a given candidate is especially well-loved (as many mayors are) or hated (as was former governor Pedro Rosselló). It would have been different if the voters had made a mark besides the gubernatorial candidates of both the PIP and the PPD; that would have been an "by candidacy" overvote. But here, again, the vote was valid, and forseen by the electoral rules.

The Times follows with an explanation of why Puerto Ricans voted this way.

On the island, party pedigree is especially serious business, often spanning generations. It is rare that a voter does not fall solidly into one of three parties based on the island's status: pro-commonwealth (the status quo), pro-statehood or pro-independence.

This is just wrong. The pro-statehood party (PNP) was created just over thirty years ago, when the pro-Commonwealth PPD had a supermajority in the legislature and no prospects of ever losing power. Since then, the PNP has grown to match the PPD's strength. Thirty years of linear change in party loyalty hardly qualifies as "party pedigree... often spanning generations". And even in the last legislative term, several lawmakers with actual party pedigrees switched tems. One was the son of a legendary senator from the PPD, who was frustrated by the PPD's opposition to the US Navy in Vieques, and jumped ship (pun intended) to the PNP. The other is a senator with several decades in the legislature, who started as a PIP stalwart, jumped to the PPD, later to the PNP, and is now back in the PPD.

Both of my parents have been active in a party different from their parents'. And many independentists consistently vote for the PPD candidates to stave off a pro-Statehood victory. They even have a name—melones, which means "watermelons", because they're green (the PIP color) on the outside and red (the PPD color) in the inside.

Finally, the poorest Puerto Ricans are often so dependent on state aid that they vote for whoever makes the most credible promise to deliver it. This is what has spawned the growth of the pro-Statehood movement, which has played on fears that American aid will dry out under independence, and that the Commonwealth is too unstable to secure it.

Mr. Acevedo-Vilá made special appeals to members of the Independence Party, the island's swing voters, to vote for him and against Mr. Rosselló, whose two terms are remembered for a rash of corruption-related indictments against some of his aides and associates. Marking a party symbol on the ballot is an act of loyalty. Marking a specific candidate indicates the clear choice of that voter. Such split ballots have not been legally challenged in the past.

Again, marking a party symbol on the ballot is a vote for the ticket. A mixed ballot is a vote for the ticket, with exceptions. But it is true that such ballots have never been challenged in the past. Then again, they've never been much in play, because there's never before been so close an election.

Only in this case, when the mixed vote was for all candidates of another party, can the party vote truly be said to be an act of loyalty. Not that it did much good for the PIP, which lost its franchise by falling under the 3% threshold, and must now register anew.