Lawyer Marisol Vicens writes in El Caribe newspaper that the people at the Central Electoral Board have gotten their priorities all wrong. The JCE people are pushing for a massive investment in an electronic voting system in time for the May 2006 Congressional and municipal election, and the 2008 Presidential election. In contrast, Vicens advocates that instead of spending all the money on this type of system, that critics say is too advanced for Dominicans, an investment should be made in computerizing the civil registry system. The obsoleteness of the present civil registry system has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Dominicans not getting a birth certificate even though most Dominicans are born in hospitals. Vicens criticizes the fact that instead of modernizing the civil registry system, the JCE seems intent on pushing ahead for automating the voting. She asks what is to be gained with this very expensive electronic voting system, if the problems of the electoral system are not to be found in the old ballot voting system, but rather in the lack of institutionalism. She expresses surprise that while the JCE had announced that they would carry out a pilot program to test the electronic voting system, the JCE has suddenly included the funding necessary to purchase the electronic voting systems for all the electoral stations in their 2006 budget. She says that the pilot was already carried out by the PLD in their primaries held to choose their candidates for the Congressional and municipal election. Fellow columnist Ramon Holguin Tejada recently pointed out that even computer-savy President Leonel Fernandez needed to be assisted to cast his vote.
“To insist on the electronic vote when we do not have a functional civil registry system seems preposterous and makes one think that the particular interests in the contracting of the services are well above our real needs,” she writes.