100ARAW.com

By Cleve Arguelles

As part of the celebration of the 2010 UP Manila Political Science Week, the UPM Political Science Society and the UPM Political Science Program Committee hosted a lecture/forum titled ‘Reality Check: A Look at the Potentials, Opportunities and Pitfalls of the Automated Election System.’

Speakers included Prof. Bobby Tuazon of the Center for People Empowerment and Governance (CenPEG) and Einstein Recedes, president of the National Union of Students in the Philippines (NUSP). They raised major concerns over the vulnerabilities of the automated election system and the need for a contingency plan to avert a political disaster.

For CenPEG, the first concern is the fact that COMELEC has already revised the election calendar seven times due to various technical, manpower and machine-related problems. It shows the COMELEC’s incompetence on implementing the automated election system and exposed the poll body’s  over-dependence and over-reliance on Smartmatic-TIM.

The latter, it has been stressed by  citizens’ watchdogs, could be a violation of the COMELEC’s constitutional mandate to secure the elections and opens the electoral exercise to intrusions by  a privately-owned (read: profit-driven) consortium where foreign interests have a stake. This may undermine the credibility of the coming elections.

Secondly, no voter verifiability feature has been installed in the machines or in the software to be used in running the machines, a situation that violates a part of Article 7 of Republic Act 9369 which states that the machines should provide the voter a system of verification to find out whether or not the machine has registered his choice.

Lastly, the COMELEC has not been able to provide a Geographical Information System (GIS) to find out and show areas where transmission of election results may not be possible due to lack of power supply, power supply fluctuations, flood-prone areas and other problems.

Without the GIS, the COMELEC would not be able to create a plan on what part of the country will hold its election manually or automatically and may ultimately undermine the conduct and credibility of the elections. Imagine if the COMELEC just decides on Election Day to implement manual voting in areas previously reported to be hotbeds of cheaters!

The COMELEC seems would just react to what would happen on Election Day itself. This is another glaring proof that the COMELEC is not ready.

CenPEG has helped convene the AES Watch, an independent citizen’s alliance for credible and transparent elections. Its has asked the COMELEC to set up a contingency plan.

If not addressed, the many problems we have already witnessed and continue to witness in the field trials and mock polls may endanger the automated election system itself and may lead to automated vote padding and shaving, massive internal rigging, and questionable election result. Ultimately, elections that lack credibility would lead to political instability or a failure of election.

I think no technology or forms of modernization would answer the problem of cheating in Philippine elections. It remains to be a political and moral issue. Those who want to cheat will always find a way to buy votes, to change the election results and to do anything to make them stay in power. Whoever controls the technology controls the votes!