It is an election year in several countries in the region and 2020 for the Dominican Republic represents the period in which municipal mayors and a new president will be elected. The first had a specific date of February 16, for which the JCE (Central Electoral Board) assigned 16,405 electronic voting teams (called “automated” in that country) to the 18 demarcations planned for use (in other less popular areas, the expected vote was the manual); at the same time that members of the OAS (Organization of American States) and the IFES (International Foundation for Electoral Systems) had come to the country to check that everything went smoothly. For both the first and the primary votes, the amount invested reported by the JCE was US$ 18.6 million.

However, the day before the same, irregularities were registered that led to the suspension during the Election Day, which led to protests on the following days. This Sunday the so-called extraordinary elections will be held, which will end what started on February 16. Since that day, investigations by the Justice, IFES and OAS have been carried out, while the JCE was forced to remove the entity's then director of Information Technology, Miguel Ángel García.

The only two detainees suspected of tampering with the equipment are now free (one of them an employee of Claro Dominicana). Javier Ubiera, delegate in the elections for the People's Force party and Coordinator of the Citizen Legislative Office of the Chamber of Deputies, explained what happened to Convergencialatina. In his opinion, from the ruling party "they looked for a scapegoat" so that "citizens would not see them as guilty" of the electoral failure. In any case, he denounced that it was the Government that “ordered the Attorney General's Office to stop the investigation and release the detainees,” accusing the government official of meddling in Justice.

Convergencialatina: What happened on February 16 that caused the municipal elections to be suspended?

Javier Ubiera (JU): Already the day before the elections, the political parties began to receive reports from our delegates in the different provinces that there were employees in schools who were manipulating the voting machines. They were placed on the 14th and others on Saturday the 15th. Thus, they were not supposed to be manipulated until the opening on Sunday, the day of the elections. However, our delegates noted that there were technicians who went to schools and manipulated them, even noticing that they printed bulletins. The parties went to the JCE to request a report on what was happening, at 5:00 pm and at 7:00 pm, there were reports at the national level. They informed us that there was a problem in the loading of ballots, so there were some in which certain candidates appeared, and in others did not. We asked for a more rigorous report and from the JCE they indicated that it was their technicians who manipulated the equipment. To this, neither IFES nor the OAS were notified of this action by the JCE.

There was a meeting of several hours where we agreed that at 5 AM on the voting day, the technicians of the Board would continue trying to solve the problem, but we calculated how long it would take each technician to solve it and the hours exceeded the day of elections. At 11 AM on February 16, the board decided to suspend the voting day, with the consent of the parties, mainly the opposition, since the official had the only ballot that appeared well in schools. At the meeting where it was decided to completely suspend the elections, the ruling party refused to do so and asked that it be kept in the places where there was manual voting.

Convergencialatina: Before these failures, had you noticed any irregularity?

JU: The whole process has been traumatic. Not only since it was suspended in February but on October 6, when the candidates for president were elected in the primary elections and I go further back, since the approval of the regulatory frameworks with the Law of Political Parties and the Electoral Law 15-19, approved in 2018 and 2019, respectively, and where automated voting was established. On October 6, the parties did not have guarantees of the voting system: we do not know who certified the voting software, no collaboration was requested from IFES, and there was no timely and proper audit. The JCE ruled by resolution that a review of the system should be made before and after the voting, and it did so only after following our complaint. One of the companies in charge had to withdraw and later they chose the Spanish Alhambra IT, whose report to this day is not known, but simply gave a press statement.

Convergencialatina: Is it possible to think about using automated voting for the presidential elections?

JU: Automated voting has already become disastrous for the Dominican Republic because it already has two precedents: the fraud of October 6 and the ruling of February 16, which could have been a failed fraud attempt.