A Law Each Day

Friday, May 13, 2022

The Faulty Automated Election System

Up to now, talks are still ongoing about the elections. People cannot forget and
are still entertaining doubts on the over-all results of said elections both in the
national and local levels. To be sure, there were already glitches in the previous
automated elections when we are using the vote counting machines of
Smartmatic. Yet Comelec still persisted in using the same machines in the last
elections even if Duterte himself has already ordered the replacement of
Smartmatic in conducting our automated elections.

Although there is no proof of fraud and manipulations in the Automated Election

System (AES), dirty talks and nasty speculations still continue to hound the minds
of so many people. In fact, based on summary report on election of 2019 there
are many vote counting machines (VCMs) which malfunctioned. There are also
findings of discrepancies in receipts generated by the machines as well as massive
vote buying in various parts of the country.

After said election in 2019 some election experts already proposed that we adopt
another system of conducting our election. Instead of the purely automated
election system (AES), it has been suggested that we adopt a hybrid system where
the actual voting and counting of votes will be manually done. Under this system
the voters themselves will write the names of candidates for elective positions
while the teachers will open the ballots and publicly count the votes in front of
watchers and voters interested in finding out the actual results in their precincts.
The automation will be concentrated only in the canvassing of votes cast
nationally and locally so as to hasten the process of finding out the results and
proclaiming the winners.

It is true that the Automated Election System (AES) requires a Random Manual
Audit (RMA) which refers to the visual reading of votes on the paper ballots or its
equivalent without the use of a machine, and a comparison of said results to the
results generated by the machine count. Such RMA is in compliance with the
mandate of the law on automated election and in the avowed policy of the State
to ensure that the elections shall be transparent and credible and that the results
shall be fast, accurate, and reflective of the genuine will of the people. But as
shown in the last election, said RMA did not truly result in a clean election. So, the
proposal of the election experts should already be adopted in the future
elections.