Poll Automation: Make or Break for Comelec

Published on July 23, 2009

Whether modernized or not, no election system will bring democracy to the people and a just government elected unless the systemic problem of fraud which is run by powerful politicians in and out of government is addressed decisively and comprehensively.

By the Policy Study, Publication, and Advocacy
Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)

MANILA — Preparations for the country’s first fully automated election 10 months from now are in high gear after the signing of a contract on July 10 between the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the consortium Smartmatic-TIM. The signing was held despite a motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) filed by lawyer Harry Roque before the Supreme Court (SC) citing a flawed joint venture agreement between the foreign company Smartmatic and its Filipino partner, along with two other legal and technical grounds.

But nothing is stopping Comelec from going ahead with the automation as poll officials expressed confidence they can hurdle the legal challenge. The highest tribunal had in 2004 nullified a similar contract on poll automation between the Comelec and MegaPacific and this alone is a no small reason to belittle the TRO motion.

The Comelec, an independent constitutional body tasked with managing and administering all elections, exudes confidence that no matter the odds it can open a new page in the country’s political history by finally implementing RA 9369 or the election modernization law. For its P11.3 billion automated election system (AES) plan, the poll body brings in what is claimed to be a dominant multinational business company in election automation, a local IT provider, a leading shipping group, and telecommunications giants.

Some 80,000 automation units – Precinct Count Optical Scanners (PCOS) or optical mark readers (OMRs), with another 2,000 on reserve will be manufactured outside the Philippines, then packed and shipped to the country. Its more than one-year calendar also includes the training of about 400,000 teachers who will man the Boards of Election Inspectors (BEIs), about 80,000 IT engineers, and voter’s education for the country’s 50 million electorate. It must also ensure that the country’s infrastructure systems, which include telecommunication networks, internet providers, cell sites as well as road and sea networks not only exist but are adequate and capable of servicing the installation and operation of the AES units to be distributed throughout the country’s 80,000 precinct clusters.

Tough question

The tough question is, will the Comelec really be able to do it?

The Comelec’s catchphrases for the AES are “Automation means clean election”; “trust the machine.” The trouble with these shibboleths is that Comelec officials themselves admit that fraud, which has tainted the electoral process in recent and past exercises, is something else and that vote buying and other cheating mechanisms may not be prevented. Fraud has been most pronounced and widespread in recent years and it is expected to operate probably with invisible hands resulting in internal rigging, unofficial access to electronic transmission systems, or other means of automated cheating.

The other fallacy is that automation will deter human intervention. Human intervention, per se, is either positive – election is a human political exercise – or negative, hence the intention should be qualified to mean interference or manipulation. Just the same, it is incorrect to claim that automation will have less human intervention. In an ongoing policy study done in partnership with the College of Law of the University of the Philippines, CenPEG has identified at this writing 30+ vulnerabilities of the AES, ranging from registration, to ballot printing, software and hardware systems, spurious codes, transmission, to shipping, hardware, and data centers. The vulnerable spots are not machine-generated but can be targets of human manipulation without being seen by the naked eye. Technology is “cognitive neutral” – it will work according to the operator’s command.

It is better for Comelec to be honest about these, to admit that automation will not necessarily lead to clean elections but that it can be achieved or minimized with proper safeguards and security measures, and full citizens’ engagement in the whole exercise.

Superman

There is also the problem with the poll body’s over-reliance on the winning bidder, Smartmatic-TIM, for the success of the AES to the extent that in one Senate hearing it was revealed that 90 percent of the election management will be in the hands of the private consortium. The poll body may be relinquishing its constitutional mandate to manage and administer the election to a private consortium whose “political neutrality” (Comelec’s own ruling) has not been fully established and its partnership and validity of the contract now under question before the high tribunal. Under this situation, who will now be accountable and be subject to lawsuit in case of failure of election and similar cases?

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