Nobody would have imagined the outcome. 7.4 million voters were eligible to vote for 3,849 positions in 158 municipalities nationwide on Sunday, 16 February 2020. At 11:11 am on that day instead, the president of the Central Electoral Board (JCE), Julio Cesar Castaños Espaillat, suspended the municipal elections in the Dominican Republic. This is the first time a nationwide vote is suspended. News reports say about 30% had voted by the time of the suspension, with major inconveniences in the 18 municipalities with automated voting, and few in the 140 manual voting municipalities.
It is now known that since early in the evening of 15 February, the JCE was aware of failures in around 50% of the automated voting machines. The digital ballots for opposition parties were not loading completely. Delegates in those voting stations did not authorize the start of the vote. The errors in the system affected 18 municipalities that concentrated 62% of the municipal votes in the country.
After a meeting with the delegates of the participating political parties, Castaños Guzmán ordered the total suspension of the vote in all the municipalities, even though the decision did not have the unanimous vote of the political party delegates.
In making the announcement, the JCE president, a strong advocate of the implementation of electronic voting in the country, said the decision was taken in the morning after JCE technicians did not resolve the technical problems.
“We are going to initiate a thorough investigation of what happened and why those ballots did not load correctly,” Castaños Guzmán said in the press conference announcing the suspension. He said a new election would be “opportunely” called. In a video of the morning meeting with political delegates, Castaños Guzmán speaks out in favor of continuing with the manual vote and scheduling a new election with the corrected automated voting machines for 1 March 2020. The consensus of the political party delegates was that this decision should be reached during a new meeting of the representatives to decide the date and the modality for the election.
Orlando Jorge Mera, delegate of the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM), called for the investigation and for “consequences” to the electronic glitch of the system.
Likewise, Sonia Diaz, general coordinator for the Participacion Ciudadana civic watchdog group, said that an investigation into what happened should be carried out and the investigation made with the participation of international and national observers, with consequences to those that are found to be responsible.
In a press conference called after the ruling Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) political committee meeting, acting PLD president Temístocles Montas said the election had been “sabotaged.” He blamed the opposition and sectors inside the JCE for the hacking of the system. During the PLD press conference, Montas noted that the Electoral Regime Law 15-19 establishes that a new election should be called within 30 days in case of electoral suspension.
He said that the PLD did not favor the suspension, and that the manual ballots should have been counted. Montas claimed the PLD was clearly winning the manual vote. He blamed Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) presidential candidate Luis Abinader for not allowing the vote to be counted for the 140 polling places where manual voting was being carried out. Journalist Altagracia Salazar in her Monday, 17 February talk show Sin Maquillaje says the PLD was losing big at the start of the vote.
Abinader said the party had officially been informed on voting day at 7:40am that the automated voting system “had collapsed.” He said at the time the party did not accept the offer to only suspend the vote for electronic polling places. He said it would have been discriminatory to only count the vote of the minority. “The authorities have brought upon us a grave institutional crisis,” he stated.
“It is outrageous and unjustified for democracy that such a high proportion of the electronic equipment has failed, after the JCE carried out countless tests on it, giving guarantees of its good functioning. The Central Election Board has failed,” said Abinader in a statement to the nation. Polls indicate Abinader is the man to beat in the presidential election scheduled for 17 May 2020.
Former President Leonel Fernández had the satisfaction to say “I told you so.” After the 6 October primary, he had lashed out against the electronic voting system for electronic fraud. In an address to the nation at 10pm, Fernández called for an independent audit to the voting devices to determine what had happened. He criticized the equipment had been transferred back to the JCE without the correct protocols.
Fernandez had repeatedly alerted of the vulnerability of the automated voting system. When the electronic system was first tested for the 6 October PLD primary, Fernández was leading the vote until around 4 pm when the vote trend switched to favor President Danilo Medina-backed candidate, Gonzalo Castillo. Fernández argued he had been victim of fraud.
Speaking on Noticiario SIN on TV, political analyst Rosario Espinal said that the credibility of the JCE has bottomed. She, too, said the JCE has to come up with a thorough investigation that explains what happened and why.
The electoral process is costing upwards of RD$14 billion to taxpayers. The automated voting equipment alone has cost upwards of RD$2.8 billion. Listín Diario reported that the contract with DigiWorld, S.R.L., the supplier of the 11,000 electronic voting kits, was for RD$1,008,118,650.00. The cost of the audit performed by Alhambra Systems, S.A. to the automated system after irregularities in the 6 October 2019 primaries was US$566,037.73.
Moreover, the JCE has reported that it has allocated RD$431.7 million for the acquisition of inputs for the assembly of the process, to which must be added RD$11.2 million for the printing of educational materials and RD$5.4 million for the educational and motivational campaign, among other expenses for the assembly of the process. To print the ballots, Editora Corripio was selected to press more than 3.2 million ballots worth RD$14,767,828.92, as reported in Listin Diario.
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17 February 2020