Electoral Oversight 2016
Shortly before the May 15, 2016 national elections in the Dominican Republic, the 2016 Electoral Oversight was created. In addition to electing the President, voters also elected representatives for the municipal districts, local governments and Congress. Participación Ciudadana (lit. Citizen Participation), a civil society organization, arranged for the Electoral Oversight to monitor the process until election day, the participation of political leaders and parties, the financing of campaigns, the legality of the processes, coverage of the media, as well as the functioning of the Electoral Commission. The main objective of this Oversight committee was to ensure the clear fulfillment of the 2016 elections, maintaining the respect for democratic norms. Participación Ciudadana installed channels so that citizens could actively denounce electoral fraud or other inconsistencies that they might have observed during the election. The main channel was a website that allowed citizens to report directly on individual incidents. Furthermore, Participación Ciudadana ensured that it monitored institutional performance, paying particular attention to the inclusion of minorities, particularly citizens who identify themselves as LGBT. Special attention was placed on media coverage regarding how the media campaigned and how the media reported on the candidates and parties. Particular attention was paid to the transparency of financial assistance and the handling of news coverage by individual candidates. On Election Day, nearly 3000 volunteers supported the monitoring of the election process, ensuring that it was carried out legally.
Institutional design
Formalization: is the innovation embedded in the constitution or legislation, in an administrative act, or not formalized at all?
Frequency: how often does the innovation take place: only once, sporadically, or is it permanent or regular?
Mode of Selection of Participants: is the innovation open to all participants, access is restricted to some kind of condition, or both methods apply?
Type of participants: those who participate are individual citizens, civil society organizations, private stakeholders or a combination of those?
Decisiveness: does the innovation takes binding, non-binding or no decision at all?
Co-governance: is there involvement of the government in the process or not?
- Formalization
- not backed by constitution nor legislation, nor by any governmental policy or program
- Frequency
- single
- Mode of selection of participants
- open
- Type of participants
- citizens civil society
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields no decision
- Co-Governance
- no
Means
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Ends
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