Less than a year before the 2019 polls, the air is once again rife with the broad apprehension that surrounds the regular spectacle that is Philippine election season. The omens include nagging pre-election issues and controversies such as test balloon statements on no-election scenarios and political maneuverings to set up a strong positions before campaign period starts.
As usual, there is new noise criticizing the Commission on Elections, the latest of which points to some mysterious transmissions that supposedly happened a day before the 2016 elections held on May 9. Criticizers claim that based on log files there are some unexplained entries that purportedly are clues to some kind of manipulation.
Fair enough, vigilance is good. For its part, the Comelec has committed to the Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms and People’s Participation to verify the authenticity and technical interpretation the data, if indeed the claims are correct, or all these are just benign misinterpretations.
To a non-techie, it’s quite easy to test such claims. The 2016 elections was hailed by many, from ordinary citizens to foreign observers, as the most peaceful, credible, and transparent elections in Philippine history. Then presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte, as forecast by polls, appeared to be the front runner in the quick count, his foes conceded, including the runner-up Mar Roxas of the then ruling Liberal Party.
These are all unprecedented in Philippine politics, and it greatly restored the public’s faith in the elections. Gone were the days when glacial paced counting frustrated the people’s anticipation and, most crucially, provided ample opportunities to cheat. Clearly, the antidote to ancient human modus like dagdag-bawas, ballot switching and other dirty tricks, is to make the process automated and thus as impervious as possible to human intervention.
For anyone who wishes to cast doubt on the integrity of the elections, proving anomaly is also as easy. Just have the claims counterchecked using the data in the Comelec Central Server, the Board of Canvassers server, and the 30 copies of the printed election returns. This design is precisely to make sure that scrutiny of the results is shared not only by the poll body, but also by political parties, credible election watch dogs as well as the general public and the courts in case of an election protest.
To prove allegations that cheating occurred somehow during transmission, it is so easy to compare the election results generated at the precinct level with what was actually transmitted. Just get a copy of a printed election return from any of the clustered precincts then check it vis-a-vis the transmitted electronic version of the self-same results. Both these information are readily available to the candidate’s party, the first are provided to watchers of both candidates, and the second is on Comelec’s official site.
The simple but foolproof strategy to cut through all the technical jargon is to establish if there was any increase or decrease in the votes of any candidates, the legal definition of fraud. Comparing the results of the ladderized system starting from the vote counting machines in the precincts to the Municipal Board of Canvassers, then the Provincial Board of Canvassers, and finally the National Board of Canvassers will show any discrepancy in the numbers
To put it simpler, just look at the ballots, scanned image, election returns and even the voter’s verification receipt with the counted results. If there is discrepancy, that confirms fraud. If they match, then the system works. The report of Random Manual Audit Committee composed of the Comelec, Philippine Statistics Authority and the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections clearly showed an almost perfect 99.9- percent accuracy. No wonder there is only one ongoing election protest compared to hundreds during the manual election era.
Observing from a communications point of view, all these noise, even without due substantiation, are classic tactics aimed to damage the credibility of the Comelec-managed automated elections obviously for the benefit of a political end. Whoever are behind these attacks are targeting the public’s perception and the legitimacy of the polls and, consequently, the mandates it bestows on all winning officials. The same elections that cemented Duterte’s Presidency. A destabilizing strategy but to what end?
We only need to look back at the last manual elections in 2004 especially with the specter of “Hello Garci” like scandals and countless of incidents even before the dark years of Martial Law.
Filipinos still remember the long history of manual elections in the country, a process historically marred by exhausting time-consuming tediousness and even deadly fraud. Just the memory of ballots being read one by one by overworked teachers for manual tallying or images of stolen ballot boxes should be enough to convince us that any method other than automated ones is a regression.
So why the seasonal attacks on Comelec and the automated elections system? If the motivation is to take over the current provider then nothing is stopping any vendor who can offer a more efficient, convenient, secure, cost efficient, faster solution from participating in the next bid. It will be to the nation’s advantage to deploy the best automation solution for elections.
In fairness, Comelec even conducted a summit inviting various providers to present alternative automated election systems and even field tested a hybrid system. So far, none has come at par with the Comelec’s requirements as mandated by law.
With two credible presidential elections and one mid-term elections under its belt, there is little question that the automated election system as implemented by the Comelc has changed the political game and without a doubt, restored the Filipino’s faith in our democratic system. Expectedly, those who thrived in the cheating prone manual elections miss the old days when they had their way with “guns, goons and gold.”
The truth is, the successful automated elections has been instrumental in strengthening the country’s global credibility and political stability, two crucial foundations for the economic growth we now enjoy.