The case of the municipal elections in the Dominican Republic.

How Cloud services and Intcomex Cloud Backup helped save Dominican democracy.

February 16th, 2020 was to be a festive day for the Dominican Republic. This would be the first time in over 16 years of the ruling party‘s tenure that municipal elections would be held, and for the first time in the Caribbean nation‘s history a national–scale election would be conducted via electronic voting.

Anticipation was huge, and on the day of the election citizen participation was even greater; however, in the early hours of the election it became clear that something was very wrong with the process.

Quickly, complaints about the malfunctioning of the voting machines began to accumulate and voter discontent began to be felt on social media and in the streets. Just four hours after the polls opened, electoral authorities were already recording a failure rate of over 60% of the ballots issued, and they had no choice but to suspend the elections immediately.

The reaction of the Dominicans was not long in coming. Confidence in the ruling party, plagued by accusations of corruption and attempts to weaken democratic institutions, was at its lowest point before the elections, and the suspension of the elections was the straw that broke the camel‘s back. A few hours after the official announcement, Dominicans from all social backgrounds took to the streets to protest en masse and the demonstrations continued for days.

Municipal elections would be held again 30 days later, this time with paper ballots and manual counting.

However, the electoral authorities needed to quickly and effectively resolve the technical issues with the electronic voting system. The presidential elections were scheduled for May 17th of the same year, and if a clean, efficient, and secure electoral process was not guaranteed, the Dominican Republic would almost certainly plunge into an unprecedented political and social crisis. The social peace and democracy of the country were at stake.

The local IT services company, C–Ven, was commissioned by the Central Electoral Board of the Dominican Republic to provide the necessary computing solutions to guarantee the suitability of the upcoming elections; a titanic task given the context.

Aware of the problems that caused the February 16th crisis, C–Ven set out to design and implement fail–proof processes, and for that they would need a cloud service provider that could guarantee technological solutions up to the circumstances, but above all an exceptional support, capable of instantly resolving any issue; that is when they turned to Intcomex Cloud.

““When the presidential elections arrived, we set out to coordinate all our resources to make a premium support suite available to C–Ven and the Central Electoral Board, designed to guarantee direct communication, minute by minute, throughout the process, so that any problem that might arise could be solved immediately,” remembers Nelson Vásquez of Intcomex Cloud.

And the problems arose. During the election day, the Dominican Republic was the target of at least three foreign cyber attacks that sought to overload the digital platforms used for data processing, and paralyze the process. Nevertheless, the support mechanisms of Intcomex Cloud were able to solve the issues without affecting the elections.

The task was monumental. The eyes of observers from the Organization of American States and the United Nations, among many other international and local organizations, were on every detail of the elections. In the end, everyone would agree that the entire electoral process was conducted impeccably.

“We are extremely proud of the success we had in ensuring that the Dominican Republic‘s presidential elections were conducted efficiently, transparently, and without any technical glitches. This was made possible by the hard work and dedication of many people, but the support, experience, and excellence of Intcomex Cloud‘s support teams were absolutely essential in ensuring that the voting results were flawless. As partners and as Dominicans, we could not be more pleased to work with Intcomex Cloud.”

Gina Guzmán from C–Ven commented