Modernizing Philippine Elections
by Gus Lagman

Why automate?

1. Counting and canvassing take too long. And this situation can only get worse. Based on the country's population of 75 million and a growth rate of 2.3%, the Philippines would be more than 80 million in 2004, 86 million in 2007 and more than 92 million in 2010. Roughly 50% of the population are voters. There will therefore be 40 million, 43 million and 46 million voters in 2004, 2007 and 2010, respectively.

If it takes many weeks to finish the counting and canvassing today with only 35 million voters, you can just imagine how long it would take to get the results in future elections. The time to automate it is now! In fact, we should have done it a decade ago.

2. Because it takes this long to count, there is always sufficient time to manipulate the results of an election. Dishonest candidates know where they are weak and they deploy their cheating mechanisms in those areas to make sure that they win ... thwarting the will of the people.

And if NAMFREL did not conduct its quick counts, then the public would not even suspect that manipulation of the results was even happening.

3. Counting at the precinct level can take anywhere from 8 hours to24 hours. Teachers, who are the members of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI), and who man the precincts, have to work continuously, often stretching to the next day, until the counting is done. In hotly contested localities, they even put their lives at great risk.

4. Canvassing at both the city/municipality and provincial levels takes weeks to complete and it is precisely this situation that offers the opportunities for dagdag-bawas. At the precinct level, it is retail
cheating and confined mostly to local candidates; at the canvassing level, it is wholesale cheating, and involves mainly, the national candidates.

5. Errors and discrepancies will be minimized. Physically and mentally exhausted BEIs are prone to commit errors, especially in the context of our elections where we have a very long list of candidates --- individual and party lists.

6. Credibility of our polls and voters' confidence will be strengthened, thereby also strengthening the accountability of elected officials to the electorate.

7. Some estimates say that flying voters represent about 5% of the total voters. Others say it's more than that. If computerization were to be applied, this can be eliminated or at least minimized.

8. It would be a lot easier to update and produce new voters lists by precinct. The present manual system is tedious and prone to error. Copies of the voters list can be provided to political parties and the COMELEC's citizens arm.

Next: What should we automate?

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