The Junta Central Electoral committed to deliver all missing voting cards by 29 January. The JCE spokesman Wilfredo Alemany said that the board has increased the staff in key areas dealing with the delivering of the identification and voting cards. The organization of the election has been critical. In 1998, a PRD-majority Senate handpicked the new judges, a step backwards from the electing of the judges by consensus that resulted in the successful organization of the 1996 presidential election. For months afterwards, attention focused on the political inclinations of the new board members, and not on their capacity to do the job or whether the job was getting done. As a result, the JCE has been affected by continuous managerial and technical difficulties that have caused major delays in the schedule of issuing the new voting cards. As of 4 February, 4,097,619 citizens had requested their cards at the JCE. And the JCE had only been able to deliver 3,070,320. Some 1,027,299 citizens still do not have the voting and identification document in hand. Meanwhile, the Listín Diario reports that the director of the Democracy Program of the Carter Center (http://www.cartercenter.org/elections.html), Charles E. Costello announced that that organization will install an office in the DR to monitor the preparations for the election and the actual election in May 2000. Costello who visited with Laura Newman, director of programs of the Carter Center, said that in doing so they are accepting an invitation from JCE president, Manuel Ramón Morel Cerda.
