The Central Electoral Board (JCE) will focus in 2024 on using a software that will be in charge of balancing the voting records in the elections, whose process will be held with manual voting and counting.
In the first days of this month of January, the electoral body will announce the final resolution of the plenary session, to celebrate under these modalities, the elections of 2024 and the primaries of the parties this 2023.
“The Board has proposed, manual voting, manual scrutiny, digitized results, the printed, non-manual minutes and the scanning and transmission of the results,” said the president of the JCE, Roman Jaquez Liranzo.
He explained that the Board’s proposal is that no minutes be transmitted out of balance or with inconsistency, since the results will be digitized, the minutes will be printed, and software will be used to balance them.
About the software, the president of the JCE He replied: “That is internal, it has already been presented to the political parties through the Elections, Information Technology and Political Parties directorates, it was socialized in person.”
He explained that the methodology was discussed in several hearings with the organization’s leadership and then it was presented to the parties, who issued their opinions, and the JCE in the next few days he will make his final decision.
“It is already a fact that manual voting is irreversible, it should be noted that the 2024 elections and the October primaries will be irreversibly manual voting, not only because the JCE has proposed it without objection from the parties, but because there is a ruling from the Constitutional Court”, he emphasized. The Constitutional ruling declared the unconstitutionality of the automated or electronic voting system.
He said that, apart from the delegates of the political parties, in the elections there will be counting observers; “For when the ballots are being counted, the parties can have their observers.”
Jáquez Liranzo said that, in addition, the plenary session approved all the bidding processes with a view to having the necessary inputs for the elections in time.
He stated that, as part of the work, the electoral boards have already been formed and that both the members of these agencies and the Logistics Coordination Offices Abroad (Oclee) will be trained this year in electoral administration and contentious matters. Diplomas and courses will be given through the National School for Electoral Training and Civil Status (EFEC).
The projections are that for the upcoming elections more than 18,000 polling stations will function, which would imply an average of about 100,000 people.
The projects
For the elections of the coming year 2024, the JCE it will again bet on the implementation of prison vote programs; voting at home and assisted voting or preference table for people with disabilities.
The projects are managed by the owners Dolores Fernández and Patricia Lorenzo.
“We are working ahead of time to materialize these projects,” said Jáquez Liranzo.
He indicated that the conscious voting project is also being developed through which term students are recruited in high schools, who aspire to be part of the electoral colleges. Some 20,000 young people have already been registered.
In the same way, a motivation campaign will be started in the universities, with members of civil society and religious groups, to attract people interested in joining the polling stations.
“We want to take this to the entire community so that citizens who are hurt by democracy participate in the electoral colleges,” said the president of the JCE when being interviewed at the Free Dialogue of the newspaper Diario Libre, under the coordination of the Politics section.
Abroad
The JCE Its goal for 2024 is to reach an electoral roll of 1,191,758 voters abroad. Currently, 713,108 Dominicans have registered abroad.
According to Jáquez Liranzo, the objective is for the vote from abroad to become the second most important demarcation at the voter level.
“We aspire to achieve a record vote abroad for the 2024 elections,” stressed the president of the Central Electoral Board.
Currently the provinces with the highest number of voters are: Santo Domingo, National District, Santiago, San Cristóbal and La Vega.
On October 17 of last year 2022, the JCE issued preliminary resolution 34-2022, which establishes the procedure for voting and manual scrutiny; the digitization, scanning and transmission of the results from the electoral precincts for the presidential, congressional and municipal elections of the year 2024. The provision instructs the National Directorate of Informatics of the JCE in order to carry out the actions that guarantee the security of the system or software to be used in the procedure approved in the resolution. In addition, it states that it will correspond to the National Directorate of Elections to prepare the manuals and instructions that are necessary for the execution of the resolution.
