The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issued a qualified opinion on the fiscal operations of the State Elections Commission (CEE). A qualified opinion is issued when the instances of noncompliance, individually or in the aggregate, are significant but not pervasive.
The Report reveals that none of the professional and consulting services contracts included the clause of no debt of pension for the support of elderly persons. Other contracts and amendments lacked clauses establishing that the contractor was not obligated to pay child support, or that the Commission could cancel the contract by prior 30-day notice.
The Comptroller's auditors also found that documents were missing from the contract files such as: the Treasury Department's Tax Return Filing certification, the CRIM Debt for all Concepts, or the Department of State's Good Standing, among others.
The audit of two findings points out that the contract formalized from July 21, 2016 to December 31, 2016 with an advertising company for $3.3 million had a clause, contrary to the regulations, that allowed the advertising company to be paid a commission between 15 and 20% of the amount billed. Circular Letter 1300-02-12 establishes that it must be 15% of the net cost of the billing. In just three invoices totaling $239,672, overpayments of $18,429 were identified. Therefore, it is recommended that the president of the State Elections Commission evaluate all payments made to the advertising company and, if overpaid, make the corresponding recovery.
The Report indicates that the CEE has not complied with the payment of $2.6 million that should have been made on July 1, 2017, to the electronic ballot-counting system company. The contract signed in 2015 establishes a schedule of 12 payments through its term in 2024, in which the CEE will become the owner of the equipment, programs and services.
In addition, the Commission did not perform preventive maintenance on the batteries in 50% of the 6,075 electronic ballot-counting machines, Optical Scanning System (OpScan) as required by the Manual 2.09- Democracy Suite ImageCast Precint System Maitenance Manual. This situation may cause the company not to provide the contracted services and affect the electronic ballot count in future electoral events.
In particular, between May and August 2018, a preventive maintenance exercise was planned and carried out in two phases whose result was that 618 machines did not turn on and did not pass the first phase, which is charging the batteries. The second phase, in May 2019, was in the process of being carried out and consisted of verifying the process of scanning the ballots and that they functioned correctly.
The Report, the second of the State Elections Commission, covers the period from January 1, 2015 to February 28, 2019.
See Audit Report DA-20-15.
To see other published reports, visit our Audit Reports section.
Some documents on this page are saved in PDF format.
To view these documents, you must have the following free program installed.
