On May 9, over 45 million voters elected
their local and national Philippine authorities using 92,509 vote counting
machines. This represents the largest deployment of vote counting machines ever.
The
Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Smartmatic, who previously organized
successful elections in 2010 and 2013, showed again the enormous benefits of
election automation and what the technology deployed could mean for the
Asia-Pacific region.
To guarantee transparency and the proper
functioning of the system on Election Day, several audits, certifications and
tests took place during the months leading up to the election. The source code
used to run the automated platform was audited for 8 months by a group of
experts, which included political party representatives, election watchdogs and
authorities. Additionally, a US-based
company SLI Global certified that the source code worked as intended.
During the voting hours every voter was
given a vote receipt showing the selections registered by the system to allow
him/her to make sure it was correctly registered. It is important to note that,
as a paper-based system, the voter-marked ballot was already a robust auditing
mechanism.
This extremely high level of auditability allowed
political organizations to check that results matched the will of the voters at
the polls, and accept the outcome of the elections.
With this new successful election, the Philippines
proved that they are at the leading front of the worldwide trend towards election
technology adoption.
The future of democracy is digital, and the
Philippines have proved it.
