Puerto Rico officials reject request to extend voter registration deadline

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Officials in Puerto Rico have rejected a petition to extend a voter registration deadline following an outcry over long lines formed by those seeking to participate in this year’s general election.

The island’s two main parties, the Popular Democratic Party and the New Progressive Party, voted against the request late Monday, as did the alternate president of the elections commission.

Those living in Puerto Rico have until Sept. 21 to register. Members of two other parties, the Puerto Rican Independence Party and the Citizen Victory Movement, which was created in recent years, had requested that the deadline be pushed to a month before the Nov. 5 election.

Hundreds of people have stood in daylong lines to register for the election in recent weeks as the U.S. Caribbean territory’s two main parties, which have long dominated the political scene, face stiff challenges from other parties.

The electoral commissioner for the Popular Democratic Party, Karla Angleró, said that she voted against extending the deadline, because it would delay other processes, including the printing of ballots, the configuration of voting lists and the recording of more than 90,000 early voting requests.

Puerto Rico’s state elections commission has come under fire in recent days as critics note that tens of thousands of electronically registered voters have yet to be recorded.

In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union noted that chronic power outages have forced the temporary closure of registration centers as it accused the elections commission of not providing enough resources to handle the surge of people seeking to become registered voters. The ACLU also had called for the registration deadline to be extended.