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 Citizen Victory Movement, which was created in recent years, had requested that the deadline be pushed to a month before the Nov. 5 election amid concerns that people will be locked out of voting.

“Not everyone can come and stand in a kilometers-long line,” said John F. Rullán Schmidt, executive director of a volunteer group called Somos Más, which seeks to promote citizen participation in politics.

He noted how earlier this week, some Puerto Ricans stayed in line until 3 a.m. to ensure they could vote. He warned the group would sue to extend the voter registration deadline if no one else does.

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.

“It’s very important to vote,” said Vanessa Casillas, a 56-year-old speech therapist. “Those in the government are not working for the people.”

On Tuesday, she came prepared with a chair and a cap for the sun. The estimated wait at the State Elections Commission was more than two hours when she arrived, but there was still enough seating indoors. Like many Puerto Ricans, she called for the ouster of Luma, a private company that has come under fire for chronic power outages across the U.S. territory, some of which are blamed on another company that oversees electric generation.

Casillas planned to vote for Juan Dalmau, who is running for governor for the Puerto Rican Independence Party.

He faces Jesús Manuel Ortiz of the Popular Democratic Party, Javier Jiménez of the conservative Dignity Project party and Jenniffer Colón of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, who beat current Gov. Pedro Pierluisi in their party’s primary in June. Meanwhile, the Citizen Victory Movement has said it supports Dalmau as gubernatorial candidate.

Dalmau and Ortiz have said they support ousting Luma, while González said she would instead appoint an energy ‘czar’ to oversee the company.

For Felicia Álvarez Capellán, 73, resolving the outages are a priority because she cannot afford a generator or solar panels.

Álvarez, who supports González, said she was surprised at the line Tuesday at the elections commission: “There are too many people. There are no resources.”

As people waited, volunteers outside distributed snack boxes containing a ham-and-cheese burrito and chips.

Rullán said one reason for the long lines is the elimination of 76 of 88 permanent registration boards across the island, as well as fewer employees at the elections commission. In addition, the commission faces a backlog of tens of thousands of electronically registered voters that have not been recorded yet as they await approval.

On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union noted that chronic power outages also 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 vote. The ACLU also had called for the registration deadline to be extended.

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.

Despite the ongoing long lines, there were only 62,400 new registered voters by last week, less than half that of 2020. Among those hoping to appear on the list was Dylan Alvira, an 18-year-old university student.

He arrived at the elections commission around noon on Tuesday with two friends, surprised at the line because he figured most people would be at work. He left because he had to get to a quantitative methods class and could not wait the more than estimated two hours to register but promised he would return.

“I will be breathing down their neck,” said Alvira’s friend, Rafael Meléndez, 22, who voted four years ago and urged his two younger friends to do the same this year. “They have to come back.”

People wait at the Puerto Rico State Elections Commission in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. The voter registration deadline ends Sept. 21. (AP Photo/Danica Coto)

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese prosecutors said Tuesday they will not appeal the acquittal of the world’s longest-serving death-row inmate in a retrial last month, bringing closure to the 1966 murder case after more than a half-century of legal battles.

Prosecutor-general Naomi Unemoto said the prosecution decided not to appeal the Shizuoka District Court decision that found Iwao Hakamada not guilty in a retrial 58 years after his arrest, saying: “We feel sorry for putting him in a legally unstable situation for an extremely long time.”

Hakamada, an 88-year-old former boxer, was found not guilty on Oct. 26 by the Shizuoka court, which concluded that police and prosecutors collaborated in fabricating and planting evidence against him. The court said he was forced into confession by violent, hourslong interrogations.

The top prosecutors’ decision to not appeal two days before the Oct. 10 deadline finalizes Hakamada’s acquittal by the district court.

”I’m delighted that we finally resolved this. Case closed,” his 91-year-old sister Hideko Hakamada told reporters after getting a phone call from her lawyer about the prosecutors’ decision.

“I kind of knew this was going to happen,” Hakamada said, with a laugh.

Unemoto, in a statement on the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office website, also apologized for Hakamada's decades-long unstable legal situation amid a lengthy court process and pledged to investigate why the retrial took so long. She expressed dissatisfaction over the court decision that investigators had fabricated evidence.

Hakamada was convicted of murder in the 1966 killing of an executive and three of his family members and setting fire to their home in central Japan. He was sentenced to death in 1968 but was not executed, due to the lengthy appeal and retrial process in Japan’s notoriously slow-paced justice system.

His acquittal became official on Wednesday when the Shizuoka prosecutors office submitted the paper waving the right to appeal.

The Shizuoka prefectural police chief, Takayoshi Tsuda, told reporters he hoped to directly apologize to Hakamada. He expressed regret for the victims' families that the case ended without finding the culprit.

Hakamada became the fifth death row inmate to be found not guilty in a retrial in postwar Japan, where prosecutors have a more than 99% conviction rate and retrials are extremely rare.

He spent more than 45 years on death row, making him the world’s longest-serving death-row inmate, according to Amnesty International.

With Tuesday’s settlement of the retrial ruling, Hakamada is now entitled to receive government compensation of up to about 200 million yen ($1.4 million).

His lawyer Hideyo Ogawa has said his defense team is considering filing a damage suit against the government and the Shizuoka prefecture over the collaboration of prosecutors and police in fabricating evidence, despite knowing it could send Hakamada to the gallows.

FILE - Iwao Hakamada, 88-year-old former boxer who has been on death row for nearly six decades after his murder conviction that his lawyers said was based on forced confession and fabricated evidence, goes for a walk in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka prefecture, central Japan, on Sept. 26, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP, File)