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The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico still does not know who its next governor will be more than a month after the general election. In a mirror image of the Florida court battles and recounts that for five weeks held up results of the U.S. presidential election in 2000, the Nov. 2 election in Puerto Rico is mired in lawsuits and vote recounting. Popular Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Anibal Acevedo Vila, whose party favors the status quo of free association with the United States, had a 3,880-vote lead when partial election results were certified Nov. 3. But the New Progressive Party (NPP) and its candidate, former two-term Gov. Pedro Rossello, who favors statehood for the Caribbean territory's 4 million people, cried foul and said 7,000 ballots had not been properly counted. The contested votes are so-called double-split ballots that have both a voter's mark under a party insignia and marks for governor and resident commissioner from a different party. The resident commissioner is Puerto Rico's nonvoting representative in the U.S. Congress, a position held by Vila for the last four years. Both parties have since also reported irregularities at voting places, including one in the northern town of Guaynabo where more ballots were cast than the number of registered voters. [more]

Lawyers want mixed-vote case returned to Supreme Court [more]