A new botched attempt to modernize elections in Dominican Republic

Election authorities in Dominican Republic failed once again to modernize its elections through technology. This time around the problems surfaced during the municipal elections held on February 16, 2020. 

Only four hours after polls opened, the Junta Central Electoral, the Dominican electoral body, realized that something was wrong with the voting machines. Julio Cesar Castanos, president of the Junta Central, acknowledged that nearly half of the voting machines did not work, leaving citizens unable to cast their votes. 

One day before the election, officials had been warned of a problem with the technology, yet, they thought it could be fixed. “We were warned, but not of the magnitude of the problem,” Mr. Castanos Guzman said. “They told us it was an issue that could be fixed the second the machines were installed.”

The automated voting system was deployed in 18 of the 158 municipalities and focused on cities and regions with high population density. Traditional voting was used elsewhere. 

This major mishap should not come as a surprise. In a video that leaked after the suspension of the elections, Guzman admitted that they had not done sufficient testing ahead of the election. Also, in 2016, the Junta Central Electoral failed its attempt to automate the voter authentication process. Although the electronic poll books did not work, authorities managed to complete the election that time. 

Although there are many reasons why this municipal election failed, one that cannot be overlooked is the fact that authorities dared to develop the system themselves with the help of providers that had zero election expertise. Instead of relying on expert companies and technology that is already available, they insisted on creating their own. Their lack of experience is now bare naked.

Electronic counting in Dominican Republic fails

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.

Tolerance of Fraud, A Fatal Consequence of Manual Voting

The OAS mission sent to Santo Domingo to oversee the democratic process held on May 20 declared that the Dominican Republic Presidential Elections were fair. The ruling Dominican Liberation Party, represented by Danilo Medina, got 51% of the votes, while Hipólito Mejía got 46%. Mejía accused Medina of fraud and called for the rejection of the results “as they do not represent the will of the people.” However, Tabaré Vásquez, former president of Uruguay and chief of the OAS mission, congratulated Dominican Republic for its “great civil maturity.” However, the organization also pointed out in its report that the election registered the biggest amount of shooting, arrests and raids from the past twenty years.

In spite of the apparent smoothness and transparency of the electoral journey, Vásquez pointed out that there actually were some cases of vote buying by both parties, but that these did not have a significant impact on the final results. Which raises the question: why is an organism like OAS tolerating an issue that could endanger democracy? Is there such thing as ‘just enough’ fraud?

Manual voting is a traditional system that has accepted little change throughout its history. People have grown habituated to its processes and shortcomings, including the ever-present possibility of someone rigging the elections. Consequently, both civilians and supervising authorities tend to expect a certain degree of dishonesty every time elections take place. In this scenario, the will of the people never gets to be fully represented, and in some cases, they just actually accept this.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. An accusation like Hipólito Mejía’s would not hold any validity in a completely automated system (including biometric validation) where human error is suppressed and the voter’s identification process guarantees the principle one elector = one vote.

With a biometric identification system implemented on Election Day, many of the vulnerabilities exhibited by manual voting would be completely eliminated: There wouldn’t be any illegal voting, voter impersonation, multiple voting and manipulation of voter’s lists.

Integrating this technology with an auditable voting system, it would not matter if thousands of ID’s were bought at the doors of a polling station, because it wouldn’t be just the ID the only requisite to cast a vote. Your fingerprint would be the other, and a fingerprint can’t just be bought.

Democracy is not supposed to be something that works in spite of obstacles set by those with their own private agendas. While some defend stagnant tradition, people’s interests are at stake. This is why a change of mentality is imperative and inevitable if we want to preserve the sanity of our political system. Automation is the key to democratic processes in which people don’t have to settle for the next best thing, for ‘just enough’ fraud to be tolerated.

When a fully automated and auditable electoral system is implemented, election results are secure and accurate, because the guarantees and mechanisms of verification provided by the system precisely represent the will of the electors. Let’s hope Dominicans can learn this lesson and a zero tolerance to fraud politic is adapted for their next elections.