Elections in the Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is a unitary state with elected officials at the national and local levels. On a national level, head of state, the President, is elected directly by the people. All members of a national legislature, The Congress of the Republic (Congreso de la República) divided in two chambers. The Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. There are also elected offices at the local level (municipalities or cities and municipal districts). It is estimated that across the whole country, over four thousand offices are filled in every electoral cycle. The Dominican Republic has a multi-party system, The Constitution define how elections are held and the eligibility of voters. The law regulates most aspects of the election, including primaries, the running of each electoral college, and the running of national and local elections. The financing of elections has been a controversial part of it, because private sources make up substantial amounts of campaign contributions, especially in presidential election. Voluntary public funding for candidates have no spending limits. The Central Electoral Board (Spanish: Junta Central Electoral, JCE), created in 1923 is the organism with the responsibility of organization, direction and supervision of the elections. The Superior Electoral Tribunal (Spanish: Tribunal Superior Electoral, TSE), created in 2010, is the competent body to judge and decide on electoral disputes and issues rulings on disputes arising internally in the parties or between them. Both TSE and JCE are autonomous institutions. The Central Electoral Board have technical, administrative, budgetary and financial independence, while the Superior Electoral Tribunal have organizational, administrative and financial independence. The Dominican Republic use a mixed system composed of the three most common methods used worldwide. For presidential election a two-round system is used, where if no candidate receives a required number of votes then there is a runoff between the two candidates with the most votes, for senators election the first-past-the-post system is used, where the highest polling candidate wins the election, and for deputies election the D'Hondt method is used.