839.00/2781: Telegram
The Commissioner in the Dominican Republic (Welles) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 5—9:35 a.m.]
1. My No. 69, December 21 [22], 4 p.m. The President has promulgated today the decree conveyed to him by the Commission containing all the amendments to the electoral law agreed upon during the conferences which I have held since my return. He has likewise made all the appointments required by the reorganization of the provincial and municipal governments. The Commission has, therefore, sent to the President an additional decree, which he will promulgate tomorrow, announcing that the new electoral period will commence on January 15 and that the national elections will be definitely held upon March 15:
The new Central Electoral Board, whose constitution is announced in the decree containing the amended electoral law, is composed as follows: President, Licenciado Agusto Jupiter, Justice of the Supreme Court; the two other nonpolitical members being Licenciado Alcibiades Robinet, President of the Court of Appeals of La Vega; and Licenciado Eudaldo Troncoso de la Concha, Justice of the Court of Appeals of San Domingo and brother of the former Secretary of the Interior. The present Central Electoral Board is composed of as capable and impartial judges as the Republic affords, and I am hopeful as to its successful execution of the electoral law. The law as now amended affords the Central Electoral Board greater powers than those which it held in the past and the members of the Commission have made a public declaration to the effect that the members of the Central Electoral Board were selected by the unanimous vote of all the members of the Commission and that they had entire confidence in their impartiality and that they would make no protest regarding any decision which the Central Electoral Board as now constituted might hand down.
The electoral period as now decreed is as short as it can safely be made. It has been my hope to be able to reduce its duration, but in view of the fact that the Electoral Board have been necessarily reconstituted and that in the former electoral period only a very slight percentage of qualified [voters?] were to receive their registration certificates, I have felt it essential that the extension now decreed be of 60 days in order to avoid the possibility of any further postponement of the date of the elections.