Election automation in the Philippines: a snapshot

taesmileland / freedigitalphotos

During the last few months, the Philippine Commission on Elections (Comelec) has been selecting election technology and service providers for the 2016 general elections. As is customary in this country, the process has sparked all kinds of controversies.

One of the latest controversial episodes occurred on Tuesday's hearing of the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms. Under intense questioning from Caloocan Representative Edgar Erice, Carlos Suarez, vice president of Indra Sistemas – a bidding company–, was forced to admit that the Government of Spain, through Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales (SEPI), is the single largest shareholder of the company.

Erice pressed Indra on the ownership issue saying that he is concerned that a foreign state might interfere with the country's elections. "I understand that it's normal for states to have a majority stake in companies. But it's a different matter if we're talking about elections" he said. Erice was seconded by Rep. Terry Ridon, who said that the matter is "cause for concern", and added:"We don’t want foreign state entities to be involved in our elections". If authorities reach a consensus over the inconvenience of risking a foreign government intervene in national elections, the Philippines would be left with only one choice to choose from the British company Smartmatic.

Besides the Spanish company, controversy is also spilling over to Comelec. For example, two poll watch coalitions accused Comelec of signing a “midnight deal” with Smartmatic for the diagnostic tests of the same 80,000 PCOS machines Smartmatic sold to the country in 2012. The fact that no contract has actually been signed to this day between Comelec and Smartmatic for such services, prompted authorities to slam those poll watchdog groups.

It is a shame that the institution responsible for the previous two successful automated elections has become the target of such aggressive campaign. Public administration should be thoroughly scrutinized, but unfounded accusations hurt the democratic ecosystem as a whole. Comelec has made mistakes in the past, just like any other public institution in the world, but it should also be credited for increasing the speed with which results are delivered and reducing post-electoral violence since automation. 

The latest two automated elections (2010-2013) have also been constantly hammered with criticism by certain watchdogs. However, these groups have not escaped controversy. Local Rep. Fredenil Castro, who chairs the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms, scolded certain "interested" groups and "self-styled" experts for creating unwarranted "noise" about the ongoing bid even as he appealed to such groups not to cast aspersion upon Comelec's integrity and credibility.  "We should not allow this thing to happen because elections are of critical importance to our democracy.”

Addressing Evita Jimenez of AES Watch, which had been critical of the automated election system, Castro appealed for the group to refrain from attacking the Comelec without substantiation. "Unless they can substantiate their accusations, I urge these groups to exercise restraint in coming out with statements that put the Comelec in a bad light" Castro said, and concluded: "The Comelec safeguards our elections. If these groups attack the integrity of the Comelec, then it weakens out democracy because it places the legitimacy of the government under a cloud of suspicion."

Controversy is still in the air, and is likely to grow as the bidding processes gets into more decisive stages. We’ll keep you posted with another snapshot in due time. 

Comelec: Philippine election managers in the spotlight

Filipinos successfully automated its elections on 20120.
Image: COMELEC - EID

With the Philippines in the grip of another elections fever, the spotlight is once again aimed on the Commission on Elections (Comelec), the constitutional body tasked to manage the polls in the country. While administering polls is always a challenging task anywhere in the world, it can prove especially difficult in a country like the Philippines where emotions have been known to run high every time poll season sets in. The agency also has had to deal with massive electoral fraud and prevention of election-related violence.

The commission is currently in the thick of preparing for the automated elections in May 2013. Aside from overseeing the technology component, the poll body also finds itself busy enforcing campaign rules. In past elections, candidates and political parties have been known to flout such guideline as common propaganda poster area, airtime limit in the media, campaign expenditure ceiling, and the like.  

This time however, the Comelec is taking a much more hard-line stance in enforcing the strictures and prosecuting the violators.

The poll body has also employed the help of social media to crowd-source the monitoring of poll offenses. Within days of launching the Twitter hashtag #SumbongMo (Report Poll Violations to the Comelec), users have sent in countless photos of violations. Buoyed by the public’s enthusiastic participation, the Comelec has issued stern warnings against erring candidates and political parties and has vowed to penalize repeat offenders.

The current Commission is headed by Sixto Brillantes, a seasoned election lawyer. He presides over the Commission en banc composed of six other commissioners. Under his administration, the Comelec has purchased some 82,000 Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) machines which the poll body had initially leased from technology company Smartmatic during the 2010 elections. The machines were sold at greatly reduced prices enabling the Comelec to save the Philippine government several billions of pesos.

For most Filipino voters, the Comelec’s stewardship of the automated polls of 2010 has done much to restore their faith in free and impartial elections. The speed, accuracy and transparency with which the election results were revealed to the public has earned the approval of millions of voters.

Electoral fraud was a big headache that had plagued the Comelec for decades, abetted mainly by long-drawn out counting and canvassing. Yet almost overnight, automation has eliminated such unscrupulous activities, earning the Comelec the praises of a grateful nation.

In the 2nd automated elections in May 2013, the Comelec has a lot riding on its shoulders. It is determined not to disappoint.

Philippines gears up for 2013 e-voting

When e-voting made its big debut in the Philippines in 2010, most Filipino voters were guardedly optimistic. Although majority was rooting for the new system, the country’s long tradition of electoral fraud seemed an impossible problem to eliminate.  Yet e-voting took everyone by surprise – leaving Filipinos in awe of its speed, accuracy and transparency.

That singularly impressive experience led most Filipinos to become ardent advocates of automation. Some sectors, especially the teachers who ran the polls in the precincts and who have benefited greatly from the introduction of e-voting, have in fact sworn to resist any move to shift back to manual.

This overwhelming national sentiment was affirmed when the Commission on Elections (Comelec) exercised its option to purchase the 82,000 PCOS machines it leased from Smartmatic in 2010.

With barely four months before the elections, the Comelec finds itself with its hands full ensuring that the polls run as smoothly as possible.  There is one major difference in the way things are being run this time, though.  Whereas the 2010 polls had only one provider (Smartmatic) handle the project from end-to-end, this year the Comelec decided to break down the project into several components and bid them out separately.

While some observers perceive some benefit in not allowing a sole provider perform everything, it remains to be seen whether the poll body is up to the Herculean task of orchestrating the various components that make up a project as  technical and as complex as a nationwide e-voting.

Recently, the Comelec conducted a mock election in multiple points all over the country. The dry run had generally been successful despite encountering a few reported glitches which were corrected as soon as contingency measures were put into place.

The exercise tested not just the technology but also the human component of the system, with procedures and protocols undergoing strict scrutiny. The poll body had vowed to use the learning in the exercise to fine-tune its procedures.

Filipino voters are hopeful this year's e-voting will be the next big step towards their dream of a totally transparent and credible election.

2012: An electoral year in retrospective

Image: Freedigitalphotos

2012 was an exciting year for electronic voting and for democracy in general. Many countries around the world gathered their citizens around the polling stations, some of them using the advantages of electoral technology. Let’s take a look at some of the electoral highlights of the year:

March: Putin gets reelected in Russia

Amid accusations of fraud, Vladimir Putin was reelected Prime Minister of the Russian Federation with 60% of the votes. The NGO Golos, defender of transparency during elections, denounced more than 3,500 irregularities committed during the electoral event. The ruling party’s initiative to install more than 200,000 webcams at polling stations to gain credibility backfired because these actually registered several acts of bribery, ballot stuffing, carousel fraud, and misuse of voting coupons.

April: Burma moves forward on the road to democracy

Burma held parliamentary elections for the first time after 50 years of military oppression. Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader who headed the fight for democracy in the country, warned about the setbacks that would emerge during the electoral event, such as damaged ballot cards and names missing from the register. These obstacles are typical of elections held with manual voting methods.

June: Mongolia debut a new voting system for Parliamentary elections

Mongolians went to the polls to select seventy six parliament seats using a new voting system: 2,446 Precinct-Count Optical Scanners (PCOS) were used across 1,905 precincts. In spite the benefits brought forth by automation, problems with the deployment and implementation of the voting technology, raised controversies regarding the validity of the result.

July: Elections in Mexico carried out with questionable electoral technology

Mexico was ready to take the leap from manual to automated voting last year, but leaving the automation process to an incompetent company was a huge mistake that threatened to leave the Latin American country completely devoid of the opportunity to modernize its electoral platform.

October: Brazil and Venezuela demonstrate the power of e-voting

Media outlets all around the world commended Venezuela for its use of electoral technology during their last presidential elections. Meanwhile, Brazil took the challenge of leading more than 140 million voters to the polling places to assign more than 5,500 posts through e-voting, and the challenge was swiftly overcome. These two countries offered proof that vote automation is crucial to carry out multiple elections at the same time with fast and reliable results.

November: USA reelects Obama

Americans attended the polling stations to reelect their incumbent president. Amid the confusing use of different voting methods between constituencies (encompassing both manual and electronic voting), and an audit system that is not exempt from failure, people elected Barack Obama for a second term. 

December: Ghana elects its President amid technical snags

Ghana embraced the modernization of its elections by implementing biometric authentication at the polling centers, but technical glitches led to long delays in some areas. In a tight race, incumbent president John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress defeated its rival Nana Akufo-Addo.

In 2013 we will be watching as nations around the world walk into the modernization of their elections and the improvement of their democracies.

Speed of automated polls counters fraud

The longer it takes for election results to be determined, the larger the window given to fraudsters to tamper with the results. While accuracy is the primary benefit of e-voting, speed is another compelling reason for automating a country’s electoral system.

Prior to its first automated polls in 2010, a prolonged period of indeterminacy was the norm in Philippine elections. Counting took days, and canvassing weeks or even months. In the precinct level, this encouraged fraud tactics such as ballot box-snatching. In the canvassing level, the problem got even worse where a tactic called “dagdag-bawas” (vote padding-vote shaving) was frequently employed by corrupt politicians to dramatically alter the results in their favor.

Dagdag bawas is the process of increasing the votes of a candidate by shaving the votes of the other candidates. This usually happens when canvassing precinct level counts into municipal counts, municipal counts into provincial counts, and from provincial counts into national counts. Since the alteration is exponential, the results can indeed be radically altered.

The slow manual system likewise put the Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) at great risk of intimidation, injury and even murder.

The introduction of the PCOS machine in 2010 gave the Philippine electoral system a major credibility boost. Initial results were delivered just mere hours after the polls closed and many local officials were proclaimed as winners soon after.

The morning after the elections, Filipinos already had a clear indication of who their next president would be. A major presidential aspirant conceded two days which came as a pleasant surprise for Filipinos used to bitter wrangling which dragged on for months.

A few months after the elections, the survey firm Social Weather Station reported that an overwhelming 75% of Filipinos were satisfied with the automation project, citing speed as one of the major factors.

From Manual to Automated Voting: How the PCOS is making the transition smoother for Filipinos

César Flores, CEO of Smartmatic Asia Pacific, delivers PCOS machines in 2010 (Reuters)

Voters in countries undergoing a shift from manual to electronic voting often feel a deep ambivalence towards it. On the one hand, they are eager to embrace automation, knowing that it is the future of democracy. On the other hand, their long familiarity with the paper ballot has conditioned them to be more demanding in terms of the system’s auditability.

Because of this, many regard the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines to be too big of a leap. DRE presents voters with a touch-screen which displays the names of the candidates. Voters do not write or shade anything but simply press an onscreen button to select their candidate. Even with a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) which gives a printed interpretation of the voter’s choice, voters who are used to recording their votes indelibly onto a tangible paper ballot may still feel a little uneasy.

It is for this reason that the OMR or the Optical Mark Reader has found favour among countries in transition. This system involves the voter shading ovals on a paper ballot which he then feeds into an optical scanner. The tangible paper ballot may be used in a manual audit which imbues the whole process with the needed layer of credibility.

This phenomenon has been observed in the Philippines, which in 2010 held its very first automated general elections. While the Filipinos realized the need to go automated to eliminate the decades-old problem of electoral fraud, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) believed that Filipinos were not yet ready to give up the paper ballot. As a compromise, the election body decided to lease from Smartmatic a variety of OMR called the Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS).

In spite of some minor technical details that need to be addressed, the elections were widely regarded as a success with many voters considering it to be most credible polls the country has ever had. The Commission was so impressed with the performance of the PCOS that it has decided purchase the machines, intending to use them for at least ten more years.

A Mongolian tale and the strange preference for PCOS

On June 29 Parliamentary Elections took place in Mongolia in the midst of an unprecedented mining boost that is driving the public agenda, and also pushing an incredible economic growth that last year reached 17.5%.

During the elections, Mongolians used a new voting system to distribute the seventy six parliament seats. Forty eight seats were chosen at the local elections, and twenty eight were chosen proportionally by party. However, that was not the only nuance of the electoral process. A new automated voting system developed and deployed by Dominion Voting Systems was used. It is was part of an attempt to improve transparency levels of elections after the manual counting fiasco that lead triggered deadly riots four years ago.

Mongolians had big expectations regarding election automation. 2,446 Precinct-Count Optical Scanners(PCOS) were used across 1,905 precincts to count the 1,198,086 votes of the 1,833,478 Mongolians registered to vote. In spite of the simplicity of the election, the promised early result publication turned to be a fairy tale, as voters had to wait more than a day for the results. Moreover, important discrepancies were found between the electronic results in some precincts and the manual audits carried throughout. Nine political parties, including the ruling Mongolian People’s Party are challenging results and demanding a recount of votes. Yangug Sodbaatar, secretary of the MPP party stated "We are demanding the traditional system of counting votes by hand in every election constituency across the whole country to end this confusion that the population has about the voting machines and automated systems".

Although these types of inconveniences might come as a surprise to some, the difference between PCOS results and manual counts is the source of a big debate. The underlying fact is that PCOS rely on interpreting the voter’s intent they do not record it directly. To further complicate things, when auditors try to corroborate the results, they also interpret the marked option. Contrasting two interpretations lends itself to discrepancies.

As a blog dedicated to automation of elections, we strongly support and encourage nations around the globe to utilize the available technology to better serve citizens. Nonetheless, we believe DRE are a much better option as there is no interpretation of the will of the voter.