Dominican Republican election authorities are desperately trying to come up with an official tally of votes after Spanish-based Indra Sistemas failed to provide reliable technology during the national elections held on May 15.
More than ten days have passed since polls closed, yet
authorities are still figuring out what went wrong and how to process the votes
of the Dominicans who participated.
In September, 2015, Indra Sistemas was awarded by the Junta
Central Electoral (JCE) a $31MM contract to provide two solutions, one to verify
the identity of voters before casting a ballot and optical scanners to digitize
the voter-marked ballots and streamline the counting and transmission of
election data. However, things did not turn out as planned.
According to a preliminary
report by the Organization of American States, “The biggest weakness on the
day of the election had to do with the use of technical equipment. In many
precincts, equipment failed, technical assistants did not show up, or there
were problems related to connectivity or the operation of biometric machines or
automated ballot counting machines...”
The report also states: “The implementation of these
technological tools had serious problems: Lack of training of the technicians
and their unfamiliarity with the way the equipment; Lack of human resources to
run the equipment; and Flaws in security code recognition.”
The failure of Indra’s technology shouldn’t come as a
surprise. Weeks before the election, political parties had expressed their
discontent with the technology and how it was being implemented. To give
assurance to political stakholders that no rigging would occur, authorities
ordered a manual count of all votes cast to run in parallel with the electronic
count. Post-election audits, which contrast electronic versus manual counting,
are yielding different numbers.
A local USAID-funded NGO named “Particpación Ciudadana” coincided with
many of OAS’ comments. This NGO has a long trajectory of election observation
in the Caribbean nation. Its third and last report on the election stated:
“In 30.7% of precincts problems in the scanning of ballots were
reported, and in 30.9% of precincts with the transmission of the vote.
Authorities relied on manual counting in 97.7% of the polling places.
Anomalies in the counting of votes reached 62.4% of schools.
In 40.4% of schools anomalies occurred during the
verification of voters and counting process. In 10% of the cases the printer
did not work.
Voter registration devices did not arrive to 29.3% of
polling centers.
Vote counting machines were missing in 27.4% of schools; in
those schools where the technology was delivered, there was plenty of confusion
on how to properly handle it.”
With more details surfacing, the JCE will have a lot
explaining to do in the coming weeks.
