Civil society group Participacion Ciudadana (PC) has issued its third and last report following its coverage of the elections held on Sunday, 16 May 2016 with 2,723 volunteers acting as observers throughout the country.
PC states that there were only minor differences between the manual count and the electronic count on the presidential level n Medina of the PLD had 62.3% in the manual count and 62.8% in the electronic count, for a 0.5% difference.
In the case of Abinader of the PRM, the manual count was 34.2% to 33.9% in the electronic count, for a difference of 0.03%.
They said that 30.7% of the voting stations had problems in scanning the ballot papers and 30.9% in the actual transmission with 97.7% carrying out a manual count. There were problems with the equipment in 59.6% of the voting stations.
PC said that they expected the results on the same night as the elections but as everything was delayed this was not possible.
They highlighted the late start at many voting stations, the failure of the registration devices as people did not know how to use them with 6.4% of stations not using them at all.
Even though the JCE extended the hours of voting to 7pm by one hour most closed between 5:50 and 6:10pm (72.4%) and 3.3% before 5:50 pm. There were actually people inside the stations unable to vote as the staff wanted to start counting the votes well before the 7pm time for the reason that many did not know that the time limit had been extended.
The main problem was the equipment in nearly 60% of the electoral colleges with 11% having no Internet connection, 10.5% problems with electrical connection and 4.7% having no electricity and the batteries did not work. PC says that the JCE knew in advance many of these stations would not have a reliable Internet connection on election day.
There were problems with the vote in 62.4% of the centers as they could not use the vote counting machines (16.1%) and in 8.7% the machine didn’t work. In just over 5% of the voting centers, the party delegates prevented the vote from being carried out and in 4.5% of cases it was done without a member of the electoral center being present.
There were serious problems with scanning the ballot papers (30.7%) and in just over 30% there were problems with the transmission.
The observers saw the promotion of political candidates on the eve of the election and on the day itself and the authorities in general did nothing to stop this practice.
PC says that the main party that was seen paying people to vote and buying identity cards was the ruling PLD and its allies and in some cases the PRM.
http://www.pciudadana.org/detalle/noticia/tercer_y_ultimo_informe_de_la_jornada_de_votacion_y_escrutinio_de_las_elecciones_presidenciales,_mun-1038
Participación Ciudadana denuncia irregularidades en las elecciones del domingo
http://www.7dias.com.do/portada/2016/05/17/i210813_detecto-grandes-diferencias-entre-resultados-conteo-electronico-manual.html
