Flanked by other leaders, Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz speaks his mind on poll fraud. Photo grabbed from Kontra Daya website.
Scores of citizens launched on Wednesday a new, independent election watchdog and opened with its initial salvo – telling the chair of the country’s election chief of serious concerns over the automated election system to be used on May 10, 2010
Kontra Daya seeks to ensure free and fair elections and to see an end to the Arroyo administration which, says its convenors, may be working behind the scenes to keep itself in power.
Leaders of Kontra Daya confronted one of the Comelec commissioners when they went to the Comelec on Wednesday, after the group’s forum-launching.
Below is their letter to the Comelec chairman:
February 17, 2010
HON. JOSE MELO
Chairman
Commission on ElectionsWarm greetings of Peace,
We from the Kontra Daya campaign are writing you to express our urgent and serious concern over developments in the automated elections system. We would like to inform you of some of our observations as well as recommendations relevant to the problems mentioned.
We hope the Comelec can look into these issues as there are continuing fears of fraud and failure of elections.
Observations:
1. In the January 27 Joint Congressional Oversight Committee hearing, the Comelec said that it could complete the testing of the machines in 45 days if there are 300 people working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The Comelec also admitted that it has yet to hire all the technicians who will carry out the test. We would like to get an update on this matter which we believe is crucial for the machines to function effectively on election day.
2. In the field tests and mock elections, the common problems have been that ballots were rejected (for various reasons) and that there are difficulties in transmission of results in some areas.
We noted that in the January 29 field test, four seemingly valid test ballots were rejected by the machine. We would like to know the technical report on this case if there has been any. In the same field test, we also noted that three SIM cards were used at the Aguho Elementary School yet transmission still failed. This happened in a school in Metro Manila, where cellphone signal is supposedly stable. We would like to know the preparedness of the Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM in situations where there would be transmission failures via GPRS in urban areas. We know that not all precincts will have a back-up BGAN device should transmission via GPRS fails. We would like to know if the survey of signal strength has indeed been completed. We also would want to know when the Comelec will announce which areas will be subjected to manual elections because of problems with connectivity.In the February 6 mock elections we noted that there were instances were ballots were rejected. We were informed that for one ballot that was rejected at the New Era elementary school, the reason given was that there were ambiguous marks. However, the Comelec and Smartmatic officials refused to let us examine the four other ballots that were rejected by the machine. This of course runs counter to the principle of transparency.
Furthermore, there are still no clear guidelines on what happens to voters if their ballots are rejected by the machine. Will they be given a chance to correct the ambiguous marks? Or will they lose the chance to vote? Also, how many rejected ballots will have to be recorded before the machine is replaced? Are ambiguous marks the only consideration for voters to be allowed to re-fill their ballots?
3. Our experience in Quezon City and Taguig during the mock elections shows that there may not be enough time for the 1,000 registered voters per precinct to vote.
The average time it took the mock voters in New Era Elementary School to vote was 5-6 minutes. That’s inclusive of the fact that they weren’t looking for their names in the voters list (they went straight to the polling center) and they weren’t looking for the names of real candidates in the mock ballot. If 50 voters need 110 minutes to vote, that would mean 36 hours for 1,000 people to vote.Even at the rate of 1 hour for 50 voters, that would still require 20 hours for 1,000 people to vote. If we have a 75% voter turnout, that would still require some 15 hours for 750 people to vote.
4. Another round of mock elections is recommended, this time with the necessary guidelines on rejected ballots in place. The next mock elections should simulate actual election day conditions, including having people go through the process of checking their names in the voters list of the precinct. We would want to see mock elections that will employ a broad cross-section of society who have different levels of understanding of the automation process (some mock polls relied mainly on teachers as participants). There must be more participants in the exercises and there must be more regions and polling places covered by the mock polls. The Comelec should be able to continuously hold these mock elections so that more and more people can be educated on the process and for watchdog groups to be able to test the vulnerabilities of the system.
Comelec must also bare its contingency plans for manual elections which are likely to take place in as much as 30% of the precincts. It must set a date when it will announce which areas are going manual. This should be done sooner than later.We hope the Commission can take note of these observations and recommendations. The biggest fear of people right now, candidates included, is that the automated election system is vulnerable to rigging or that there may be failure of elections if all does not go well.
The Comelec must adopt a self-critical outlook so that the problems and vulnerabilities can be addressed.
We hope you can give these points your utmost consideration.
For the Convenors,
ABP. OSCAR CRUZ
BP. ELMER BOLOCON
FR. JOSE DIZON
BIBETH ORTEZA
GRACE POE-LLAMANZARES
PROF. GIOVANNI TAPANG
RENATO REYES, JR.
HENRI KHAN
BETINA LEGARDA
ATTY. HARRY ROQUE
FERDINAND GAITE