Automated or Automatic Election

By May 2010, almost 50 Million Filipinos will be casting their votes in a full automation system. About 80,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines will be all over the country come election time.
The Commission on Elections is mandated to conduct elections, a credible and a transparent one. With Republic Act 9369, the COMELEC – this May 2010 – will be conducting an automated one.
The winning bidder – in a public bidding conducted by the COMELEC to provide the equipment to be used for this election – is the Smartmatic-TIM of Holland. The automation by Smartmatic-TIM amounts to 11.3 billion of taxpayers’ money.
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The PCOS machines – which were manufactured in Taiwan – will be fed upon with ballot papers by the voters after they cast the votes in the ballot paper. Here, the ballots will be counted and an election return is generated. Ballot papers are listed with all the candidates in alphabetical order from the national to local posts and party-list groups. At the left side of an entry is a circle which is to be shaded.
To accommodate all voters, the Comelec will close its doors 6 in the evening after which the result will be relayed to the Comelec central office, watchdogs, political parties, etc.
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There seem to be no problems, supposedly. But there are various user errors which are risk factors. When the voter accidentally casts over votes in a position say senator, all the votes intended for senate positions will not be counted. When the voter recklessly feeds the ballot to the machine, the machine will not be able to properly scan the ballot paper and it would disenfranchise one’s right to vote. When the voter – due to his mishap – dog-ears the ballot, the machine will not accept the ballot and it would immediately disenfranchise the voter of his right to vote since he is entitled to only one ballot with no extra. This can lead to a neophyte shying away from voting.
There are also various software risks in this automation like any other operating systems. Who will secure the source code? If this will not be exposed to public scrutiny to ward off hackers, then who are only entitled to access the source code? How about the software as a whole, can’t it be susceptible to wholesale electronic fraud? The device itself must be scrutinized.
If a pilot test determines credibility, then we are sure that there will be no guarantees that this 2010 election will be credible. Last August 2008, the automated election conducted in Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao revealed 23 common errors and other deficiencies. It led to the findings of Comelec Advisory Council that the COMELEC is technically ill-equipped.
More to that, if there can be a manual Garci then why there can’t be no online one? If guns and goons are the mutual nemesis of the people before, then it can be gold and genius now.
Knowing that the moral standard of present dispensation has nosedived to critical levels as made veritable by the disregard of propriety and rule of law the present administration has committed openly, we are at loss on how certain we are that this election will be credible. Add to that the miserable record of acceptance by the public towards the Commission on Elections’ credibility, integrity and honesty.
We Filipinos glossed too much convenience over honesty.