Municipal elections to be held this Sunday

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC - In Brief 13 Mar 2020 by Pavel Isa

---

This Sunday municipal elections will be held throughout the country. This is a new call after the suspension of the February 16 elections due to widespread technical failures with the electronic vote affecting 62% of the electorate. 100% of the voting will be done with paper ballots and will proceed in a context of increasing fears on COVID-19. Although anger and mobilizations against electoral board and the PLD in the weeks following the suspension of the elections increased the probability of a large voter turnout, the threat of the epidemic could reduce it. In addition, mobilizations have receded significantly as the election day approached. However, the discard of the electronic voting has not cleared apprehensions and doubts. First, the electoral board is still affected by a serious credibility problem and there are still doubts about its ability to manage a process that, in addition to being technically challenging, can be very conflictive. Second, although the transmission of data will be electronic through scanners, it is not without controversy because they will be made with the same equipment used in the 2016 elections in which problems were reported for about one third of the polling stations. In parallel to the organization of the elections, political parties and civil society institutions have been involved in an intense dialogue aimed at strengthening the credibility of the elections and the mechanisms to fight electoral crimes, mainly appointing an independent electoral prosecutor. This process is on its way but is mostly aimed at the May elections. For Sunday elections, political parties and civil society organizations, together with the electoral board...