The Plenary of the Central Electoral Board (JCE), headed by its president, Julio César Castaños Guzmán called the Extraordinary Municipal Elections to be held on Sunday, 15 March 2020. This time around, physical ballots will be used in all the polling places. For the election, the candidates and their proposals will be the same.
The election is again scheduled for the 157 municipal districts and the National District. The same 3,849 municipal officers will be elected.
The plenary of the JCE is made up by its president, Julio César Castaños Guzman, and members Roberto Saladin Selin, Carmen Imbert Brugal, Rosario Graciano de los Santos and Henry Mejia Oviedo, assisted by the secretary general of the JCE, Ramon Hilario Espiñeira Ceballos.
The announcement comes after an unexplained electronic glitch caused the collapse of most of the automated voting systems that had been installed for the 2020 election. The president of the JCE told political party delegates before the suspension of the election that the system collapse was due to the failure to implement quality controls.
The largest opposition party, the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) protested the party was not consulted before the JCE made the announcement. PRM president José Ignacio Paliza said the decision for a new date and manual vote was taken unilaterally by the JCE. The last time the JCE had met with the political parties was on Sunday morning when the automated voting system had collapsed.
Paliza said the decision took the party by surprise and that they had found out about the new date when in the middle of a meeting with the observer mission of the Organization of American States (OAS).
“We believe that behind these severe events there was a sinister, planned action, whose perpetrators must be identified and punished in an exemplary manner,” Paliza said in a statement read to the media after leaving the meeting with the OAS. In making the announcement, the JCE did not address actions to deliver an explanation on the collapse of the costly automated voting system.
According to the statement, the PRM is requesting the creation of an OAS-EOM (OAS Electoral Observation Mission) with a series of conditions to be taken into account for the upcoming elections. The PRM requests that the OAS-EOM remain in the Dominican Republic until the conclusion of the Dominican electoral period in 2020. The conditions include a remake of the JCE’s election and counting departments and the creation of a follow-up commission to the CEB composed of personalities of recognized integrity and renown.
All sectors and politicians have demanded from the Central Electoral Board (JCE) an exhaustive investigation to determine the reasons for the failure in the system.
Journalist Altagracia Salazar said the decision of the announcement of the 15 March 2020 and the lack of announcement of an investigation into the reasons for the electronic glitch is evidence that the “JCE don’t have an idea of the political crisis the nation is going through.”
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18 February 2020