The Central Electoral Board (JCE) and the major political parties have agreed on a time line for the 2006 congressional and municipal elections. As part of the process, a commission from the JCE traveled to Brazil to begin the process of acquiring 3,000 electronic voting machines for the upcoming elections. There will be close to 200,000 new voters, who, added to the current voter registration rolls, will make up the 5.4 million people with voting rights in these elections. The voters will be electing 32 senators, 178 deputies, 151 mayors and 962 municipal council members. The JCE will be hiring a total of 105,000 people to work on the election. And they will have a lot to do. The nation currently has 151 municipal election boards, and, of these, there are 17 new ones and 44 re-structured ones. There will be 3,088 electoral stations and a total of 12,537 polling stations.
Key parts of the process are the 16 December closing of new “cedulas” – the personal voter registrations card and identification card supposedly carried by every Dominican over 16- and the closing of voter registration rolls on 16 January 2006. The election will be officially announced on 16 February 2006 and 2 March 2006 is the deadline for establishing electoral alliances. Candidates will be presented on 17 March.