@neoteotihuacan @blogdiva not rigged in the sense of faking votes (although there really has been a thing where a bunch of literal dead people were found in the active voter rolls), I'm telling you that there's subtleties to the way the referendum is defined (which is usually determined by the in-power party, the statehood party), which is designed to inflate the numbers to make support for statehood bigger than it actually is. That, combined with the number of people who vote for statehood out of fear of repercussions that are not necessarily going to happen.
For example, there's been referendums in the past where there were two separate commonwealth choices, intended to split the vote. Again, a referendum put out by the PNP, and which the PPD boycotted, effectively making the results look like statehood won (again), without representing the votes of the people who abstained from voting just on this issue, in protest (which was a LOT of people, just like in this case)