Skip to footer

Will the Dominican Republic election be decided by voters in the US?

A number of Latin American countries have created absentee voting systems to allow their expats to vote in national elections. But what if an election is decided by voters abroad, asks a blogger.

|
John Riley/AP/File
Hipolito Mejia, right, former president of the Dominican Republic, is shown prior to stepping up to the podium for a speech during a campaign rally in Santo Domingo in this file photo.

• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.

Franklin Garcia, [president and founder of the DC Latino Caucus wrote a blog in the Huffington Post last week, saying]:

With more than 220,000 registered Dominican voters in the US eligible to vote in the May 20th election, Dominicans in the US make up more voters than 27 of the 31 provinces in the country. The total number of Dominicans registered to vote overseas stands at 5 percent of the total voting population of 6.5 million. The polls in the Dominican Republic are quite close right now. Most polls have shown Danilo Medina leading by a few points, but some recent outliers have given the edge to former President Hipolito Mejia. Based on the data I've seen, the election appears to be heading for smaller than a ten point margin and could be much closer.

 
This sets up a potential scenario in which voters overseas, most in the US, play a decisive role in the DR presidential election. That's not likely as the overseas voters will turnout in lower numbers than those at home and probably aren't voting overwhelmingly for one candidate. But it's possible.

The DR is also an interesting case because the foreign voters in this election will also have the opportunity to vote for several members of Congress to represent their community. Nobody expects the expat representatives to be the tie breaker on congressional coalitions this time around, but it could happen at some point in the next few election cycles.
 
A number of Latin American countries have created absentee voting systems to allow their expat communities to vote in national elections. Up through now, it has never been the decisive factor in an election.
 
If May's Dominican election or any other future election is decided by voters abroad, or even if it's close enough to make it a question, what happens next in the region? Could any country backtrack on the voting abroad rules they have created? Is it actually fair for a portion of the population who live outside the country to overturn what would otherwise be the majority result by the domestic population? Those are all fun questions to consider as the DR race comes down to the wire.

– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.

Get daily or weekly updates from CSMonitor.com delivered to your inbox. Sign up today.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Will the Dominican Republic election be decided by voters in the US?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2012/0430/Will-the-Dominican-Republic-election-be-decided-by-voters-in-the-US
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe