PUERTO RICO Recount turmoil continues

Gubernatorial candidates are separated by 3,880 votes.
ORLANDO SENTINEL
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The recount in Puerto Rico's still-unsettled governor's race resumed Monday as about 20,000 protesters decried the U.S. District Court's intervention in the ongoing controversy.
The recount -- stalled for six days after about 150 election workers walked off the job Nov. 23 over how disputed ballots were being handled -- got under way only after officials brokered a deal to count those ballots but hold the tally aside.
"This gets more complicated every day," said Aurelio Gracia, president of the Puerto Rico Election Commission. "It isn't a perfect solution, but it will enable us to meet a Dec. 30 deadline to have this completed."
Island direction in balance
Some 2 million Puerto Ricans cast ballots in the Nov. 2 election between Anibal Acevedo Vila of the Popular Democratic Party and Pedro Rossello of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party. When counting was suspended on election night, Acevedo Vila held a 3,880-vote lead, with some 28,000 disputed ballots remaining uncounted.
In the four weeks since, the island has been in political turmoil over what to do with the ballots, with the commonwealth's supreme court ordering them counted, and the U.S. District Court overriding that decision and requiring that the disputed ballots be set aside until the court can review them.
Hanging in the balance is the direction that this Caribbean U.S. territory will take in the coming four years, since Acevedo Vila supports Puerto Rico's current commonwealth status and Rossello wants the island to move toward statehood.
As the counting resumed Monday, about 20,000 Acevedo Vila supporters staged a boisterous demonstration outside the island's federal courthouse, many of them chanting anti-U.S. government slogans and condemning federal "intervention" in local elections.