A team of electoral experts from the Organization of American States (OAS) recently presented the conclusions of their investigation into the e-voting glitch that led to the cancelation of the 16 February 2020 election and automated voting in the Dominican Republic. The OAS mission concluded that there were no external attacks, sabotage or attempted fraud; instead, it was merely mismanagement by the IT department of the Central Electoral Board (JCE).
The cancelation of the election caused an uproar, and waves of hundreds and later thousands of millennials to congregate at the Plaza de la Bandera that is located fronting the JCE, the Ministry of Defense and the Constitutional Court headquarters. The young people demanded an independent explanation. It is estimated the cancelation of the election cost Dominican taxpayers about RD$4 billion. The election would be rescheduled for 15 March 2020.
Below is the position in full of the groups that demonstrated against the exculpation of the JCE by the OAS report.
Communiqué on the OAS and UNIORE reports
“At Creo En Ti RD, Revoltiao, Santiago Protesta, Somos Pueblo, Gente Unida RD and SFM Protesta, formed under a civic block, we receive with concern the report rendered after citizens demanded an explanation following the electoral fiasco of Sunday, 16 February. At the same time, we disapprove of the exculpation made to the Central Electoral Board (JCE) on the evidence of technical, procedural and logistical failures presented by the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Inter-American Union of Electoral Organizations (Uniore) on the suspended elections. This is a merely symbolic act that allows them to wipe the slate clean.
The response of the JCE, to restructure its Information Technology Department, does not live up to the gravity of the situation raised in the reports, nor to the demands of the thousands of citizens in the country and communities of Dominicans abroad who demonstrated to demand serious and, above all, credible answers.
The level of negligence described by the OAS and Uniore in their reports is of such magnitude that it is not credible that any member of the Information Technology Department would not have noticed this and warned about the need to ensure the correct operation of the software, establish a procedure to verify failures and plan for available support. This lack of control is added to the waste of more than one billion pesos of the public treasury in the acquisition of automated voting equipment, for which the governing body of the elections has not responded.
The recommendations that the OAS places in its report are aimed at improving automated voting, and therefore do not apply to the current situation in the Dominican Republic. In view of this, we consider it a bad joke that the JCE says that “they will take into account the recommendations of the OAS”, when this releases them from any responsibility.
We also disapprove of the loss of the chain of custody of the teams reported by both the OAS and Uniore, and we vigorously demand an investigation of those responsible for the omission of this action, which is fundamental to the clarification of the events that occurred in February.
We also demand an independent investigation into the actions of the Public Prosecutor’s Office following the events of the last elections in which Miguel Antonio Regalado and Ramón Guzmán Peralta were being investigated, as well as a clarification of the investigation that led the Public Prosecutor’s Office to initiate proceedings against these citizens.
But, what is more important is our demand for the application of the regimes of administrative and constitutional consequences to all those responsible. As UNIORE details at the end of its report: “it would be wrong to place this responsibility exclusively on technical staff. This mission has been able to point out the absence of control points and coordination mechanisms between the different instances of the JCE responsible for the electoral process”.
The answers given by the OAS and UNIORE reports were not the only ones we demanded in the Plaza de la Bandera. We demanded a response from the Rule of Law, called not only to organize, but to sanction those who, through fraud, incompetence or incapacity, violate the rights of Dominicans.”
Read more:
Hoy
El Nuevo Diario
DR1 News
DR1 News
DR1 News
17 April 2020