MAPping the Future
March 30, 2009
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Shouldn’t We Have A Backup System To A Full Poll Automation?
By Felicito C. Payumo

There is no argument that we need to automate our elections. What drove home this point were the recently conducted elections- not in the U.S.- but in India. We have been used to watching elections in the U.S. concluded speedily. But India, granted that theirs is not a Presidential form of Government, but with more than one billion people, was also able to tell the world who the winners in a matter of days.
The Philippines, with its less than 90 million people, should be able to do no less. But the question is: do we completely abandon an admittedly primitive system and jump into full automation nationwide by adopting the DRE or OMR systems? DRE (Direct Recording Electronic System) is a touch-screen method of voting with instantaneous tally of votes. Since this would require 1 to 3 DRE machines for every one of the 250,000 precincts, a total of 250,000 up to 750,000 units may be required at a cost of more than P20 Billion. The OMR (Optical Mark Reader) or the PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scan) requires shading of machine readable ballots at the polling place which are then scanned and counted by machines located either at the precinct or municipal level. If the ballots are immediately brought to a central counting center in the Municipal Hall after the closing of the polls, then no precinct results will be available until election returns are printed and electronically transmitted from the counting center. This makes the transport stage very crucial and dangerous, according to Atty. Luie Tito Guia of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). In case of an electoral protest, It would be very difficult to detect pre-shaded ballots stuffed in the boxes. But even if nothing happens during the transporting, would the voters accept the results? What if the results run counter to their expectations? Gus Lagman of TransparentElections.org likens it to an Ateneo-De La Salle basketball game with no running score being shown. When the buzzer signals the end of the game, the electronic score board flashes the final score: Ateneo 100 –De La Salle 99. “What do you think will happen?” he asks. "The La Sallites will bitch, “ we said in jest. We knew, of course, that pandemonium would break loose. Would we want pockets of unrest or even mini-riots happening all over the country?
The alternative, which the COMELEC favors, is to locate the counting centers at every barangay school polling centers, which requires deploying 80,000 counting machines at a ratio of 1 machine per cluster of 5 precincts. Still, the voters will not be able to observe the tallying process that happens inside the machines. It will even be more dangerous if the same OMR/PICOS specialized machines will be used to upload the ERs directly to the Web. Transparency, or the lack of it, spells the difference for voter acceptance.
The TransparentElections.org, on the other hand, favors the Open Election System (OES) that retains the manual system of voting, counting and preparation of the election returns (ERs) at the precinct level and which, therefore, requires no voter training. Voters would not want to drop their ballots into a “black hole“; they would want their votes read out in their presence. The reading and counting of votes during elections are events they look forward to.
But what will be automated are the canvassing and consolidation of ERs from the Municipal to the National level. The encoding of the ERs and posting to the Web makes them accessible to the public including OFWs abroad. It will require buying 80,000 PCs and Servers which, at P25, 000 each, will cost only P2Billion- already included in the total cost of P4 Billion for the OES. But bidding out this large number will surely bring the unit price down. By comparison, the approved budget for the OMR is P11.3 Billion. The PCs and Servers may be donated to the schools, unlike the DRE or OMR machines which will have to be stored at additional cost.
OES is not the same as the hybrid system favored by the House (manual for local and automated for national candidates). TransparentElections.org recognizes that, while not impossible, it will be difficult and more costly to run parallel two different systems .
And no, TransparentElections.org is not interested in bidding; it represents no vendors of specialized machines and, therefore has no vested interests. Comelec can get competitive bids from as many PC vendors and brands. TransparentElections.org is a group of professionals supported by computer science professors and graduates of UP who wrote the software for OES from contributions of donors who find spending P11.3 Billion for the OMR system unconscionable. They are willing to donate the system to Comelec.
But are we not sacrificing speed by not automating the voting and counting process? Yes, but not much. Manual voting and tallying which happen simultaneously throughout the country at precinct level takes only 5 to 12 hours at most. It is the manual canvassing and consolidating of the ERs at the municipal/city, provincial and national level that takes 25 to 40 days. It is ludicrous to spend an inordinate amount of money (more than P7 Billion for machines alone) to squeeze out a few hours of time spent for voting and counting which represents only 2.5 per cent of the total election timeline; a highly disproportionate allocation of resource and effort especially when done at the expense of an indispensable element for voters’ acceptance- transparency. Where it makes sense to automate is the canvassing and consolidation of the ERs where wholesale cheating can occur. TransparentElections.org reported instances of tampered ERs, e.g. numeral 1 changed to 4, 3 to 8, or a numeral is added before or after the digits. Former COMELEC Chairman Chris Monsod, who knows the capability of COMELEC, fears that the logistics requirements of bidding out and deploying 80,000 specialized machines throughout the country on schedule, training Election officers and voters, and trusting that all the machines will work without any hitches is too daunting a task given the few remaining months left before the 2010 Elections. Without a ready backup system, we are being asked to make a sudden leap of faith in the COMELEC and the machines.
While it is true that the PICOS machines are required to provide backup units, concerned experts do not consider spare units as a fallback system. They propose to put in place a different system like the OES, should implementation of the OMR system fail. But would this not add to the cost? Yes, but the 80,000 PC units will not be wasted. They are not even enough to donate 2 units to each of our 45,000 Barangays.
But more worrisome is that the rush to fully automate may put the integrity of the system at risk. The threat comes not from hackers. It is that a few specialists will hold the key to the software of these specialized machines. The elections will be dependent not on the people who will vote, but rather, on a few people who will count the votes. Such operatives find the picture of nuns hugging ballot boxes good front page copy. “They can hold on to them for as long as they want because we are not going to snatch them,” they say, laughing. They’ve already done their wholesale cheating with the Election Returns. With OMR/PICOS, wholesale dagdag- bawas can be done electronically by a few specialists; just 5 votes added to select candidates per precinct (and deducting the same number from others) already give a million votes advantage, with no one else knowing it. And no operatives are needed to talk to hundreds of parties at precinct, municipal and provincial levels. Is this possible? The experts say yes.
There is, of course, the issue of whether the Law (RA 9369) allows partial automation. While the intent is to automate all phases of election, the IFES points to the Law’s statement of policy which declares that the State should recognize COMELEC’s mandate and authority to prescribe the adoption and use of the most suitable technology of demonstrated capability taking into account the situation prevailing in the area. The COMELEC has a lot of leeway. The Law does not require it to fall flat on its face. Based on its assessment of what suitable technology is, the COMELEC can decide to implement automation partially, or even go completely manual should it determine that the schedule is tight given the late approval of the Budget. “The fact that R.A. 9369 contains sections dealing with manual elections (sections 31-40),” IFES contends that the intention is to “make the manual process still available as an option, in case COMELEC finds that no technology would be appropriate. “
The question is: How will the COMELEC decide? It is disturbing to hear that the COMELEC Advisory Council has found another reason not to consider the OES: it has not been tried and demonstrated in a previous election and it has yet to be certified by a certifying body. While demonstrability should be a condition required of both DRE and OMR/PICOS specialized machines, observers find it absurd to disqualify OES on this ground. We have been using manual voting and counting in all past elections, while the encoding of ERs using tried and tested PCs and Servers and their uploading to the Web are simple tasks which any computer literate student can do. Finally, if there is a group that should consider the economical use of our limited resources, it is the COMELEC Advisory Council which has as members Business Executives from the private sector. They are expected to be mindful of our resource constraints. But they interpret the Law, even wrongly, as an iron-clad order for an immediate end to end poll automation. Costs do not figure in their decision-making. How disappointing!

F.C. Payumo was a three- term Representative of the Ist District of Bataan and a former Chairman and Administrator of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority. He is currently Chairman of the University of Nueva Caceres.