The JCE president, Roman Jaquez Liranzo, called on citizens to exercise their right to vote with civility and in peace, minutes before the opening of the polling stations and in the presence of delegates of the political parties, members of civil society and national and international observers.

“You, Dominicans, have in your hands, in a scoreboard, the destinies of the municipal governments of the Dominican Republic”, he expressed.

Let’s vote as you have always done, with civism, in peace and sure that this process will mark with the political maturity of all the Dominican people, democratically and positively, one before and one after’, he added.

Eight million 105 thousand 151 voters are summoned to these elections, while 16 851 polling stations are distributed in the 158 municipalities of the country.

A total of 19,465 candidacies were approved, of which 8,450 correspond to women (43.4%) and 11,15 to men, for a total of 56.6%.

Today, Dominicans will elect 158 mayors and an equal number of deputy mayors, 1,164 councilors and their alternates, 235 directors and a similar number of municipal sub-directors, as well as 735 members of the board of directors.

Liranzo reiterated that the JCE is the only source of information on the official results of the vote, and therefore the publication of exit polls and quick counts is prohibited.

In this sense, he invited the population not to be carried away by fake news and disinformation.

The polling stations will remain open until 17:00, local time, and the Electoral Boards will issue their first bulletin after 20 percent of the results received have been processed or when, without having reached that percentage, 20:00, local time, of this Sunday has been reached.

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