Defying Covid-19, London holds successful elections

When Covid caught the world by surprise last year, London was one of regions in England which bore the brunt of the pandemic’s fury leaving a staggering 4,000 residents dead by April.

Election authorities had no choice but to postpone their May elections one year, a draconian move they hoped would buy them more time to figure out a way to uphold the right to suffrage while a pandemic raged. With a whole year to plan, the city made sure to refine its processes and implement enhanced safety protocols. Aside from the mandatory mask and social distancing measures, authorities decided to extend the normally 1-day count to two days.

Mary Harpley, Greater London Returning Officer (GLRO), said shortly before the May 6 polls that the new counting process would be different due to the Coronavirus pandemic. “Much planning has gone into ensuring that the safety of Londoners and election staff is prioritized. We look forward to running a safe, fair and efficient democratic process in partnership with the London boroughs, to allow London's 6.2 million voters to have their say on 6 May.”

With such a large voting population scattered across 33 boroughs, London has one of the most challenging local election landscapes in the UK. They employ three different counting systems: first-past-the-post, a supplementary vote system, and a form of proportional representation. To facilitate vote counting GLA authorities employ election technology.

London’s e-counting solution ensured ballot papers were scanned and processed quickly and accurately, with full auditability of results, which resulted in increased transparency and integrity. The electronic count of 10.6 million votes was validated by the Constituency Returning Officer and the Greater London Returning Officer.

The centralized processing of the voter-marked ballots, hitherto a one-day process, began on May 7th, and was carried over to the next day to ensure a Covid-19 safe environment. High-speed scanners deployed in the three count centers made sure that count was delivered with speed, efficiency, auditability, and all the while requiring less staff.

Deputy Greater London Returning Officer, Alex Conway commended everyone involved in the exercise, saying that “the commitment of their teams meant the rapid shift to delivering a COVID-safe election was a real success.”

Eight reasons why adopting a hybrid system will hurt the Philippines’ democracy

After eight years of increasing automation of the voting system in the Philippines, 2018 is marking a distressing period for potential regression -from the technological and political perspectives- for the Filipino people. A group of former and current lawmakers is pushing for the use of a new hybrid election system for the 2019’s polls.

What is the hybrid voting system?

The proposed Precinct Automated Tallying System (PATaS) consists of a semi-automated voting process. It combines manual voting and counting in polling precincts, and automated canvassing through electronic transmission of election returns. The fundamental difference between the hybrid proposal and the current automated election system (AES) is that PATaS calls for manual counting -bringing back all the consequences inherent to manual elections. After voting, the manually-tallied election returns (ER) are encoded into a computer which transmits the information electronically to a canvassing center.

The hybrid system was already tested in June 2015. According to one of the proponents, “going back to manual counting of votes would be more transparent than an automated system. However, instead of returning to a fully manual system, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) can adopt a hybrid system where the results will be transmitted following a manual count.”

However, during the end-to-end demonstration at Bacoor National High School Annex in Cavite province, the system proved unreliable and inefficient. Poll observers noted some issues and problems. They found the manual counting process was inconveniently slow and confusing, for poll workers, voters, and political representatives. Some of the observers labeled the experience as “miserably unsuccessful to even closely match the advantages of a fully-automated election.” The experts agreed that moving back to manual counting, as implied under the hybrid system, would be a significant setback.

Election technology experts have voiced at least eight reasons why reverting to manual counting would represent a dangerous step towards the weakening of democracy in the Philippines.

Manual voting, an unfortunate regression
The hybrid system would mean more people in the precincts just like in the past, and therefore, processes more susceptible to tampering and manipulation.

Slowness increases window of opportunity for fraud
A hybrid system would bring back the long, and time-consuming counting that had plagued elections before the introduction of AES in 2010. One of the clear benefits of the automated system is the speed that allowed Filipinos to know their new leaders before they went to bed on Election Day.

Increased human intervention= increased subjectivity
The hybrid system eliminates one of the most significant benefits of the Philippines’s election technology, its impartiality. By returning to manual counting, those in charge of interpreting the intent of the voter will have comprehensive control to decide what votes are counted (and for which candidates,) and what votes are annulled.

Prone to human error
The hybrid system is prone to human error, whether intentional or not. Poll workers in charge of interpreting manual votes can make a mistake. Also, the equipment used during the canvassing process is operated by people who are likely to succumb to the fatigue of a long Election Day. Traditionally, counting and canvassing occur after 10 hours of voting, when tensions run high, and people are tired. Comelec has experienced (under AES) an accuracy level of 99.995%. This threshold is merely impossible to obtain for a manual count.

Poll workers would be exposed to threats of violence, again 
By expanding the responsibility that poll workers have over the accuracy of results, they become more susceptible to coercion and the target of violence. Given the long history of voter intimidation in the Philippines -and the improvement during the last three elections- going back to manual counting seems like a severe setback.

Increased workforce requirement
Running the hybrid system would require hiring more school teachers and other polling staff for even longer periods of time. In an age of increasing labor cost, going back to manual elections is unsuitable for the EMB. If the hybrid system were adopted, it would require the employment of 900,000 election inspectors for the 100,000 polling precincts. However, there are only 630,000 public school teachers available to take on such a task.

Small parties are at a disadvantage
The fact that it is a poll worker and not an agnostic machine who interprets the paper ballot gives large political parties the capacity to send representatives to all polling stations. This is an advantage over smaller parties. Comelec, an institution that is responsible for leveling the playing field, should avoid the introduction of a system that favors certain parties over minor political groups.

Increase in election costs
The hybrid system does away with the optical scanners, but instead uses a significant number of technology devices (e.g., laptops, projector, scanners, printers) in each polling center. Regarding technology, savings would be minimal, if they exist at all. Furthermore, by increasing exponentially the human power necessary to run the election, the system will inevitably lead to higher costs. 

El Salvador: An open path to election modernization

During the recent Legislative and Municipal elections held on March 4, El Salvador’s elections tribunal implemented a software solution to consolidate, aggregate and publish results, which allowed them to offer reliable and timely preliminary counts. 

Back in 2015, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE in Spanish) took three weeks to come up with an official tally. With this fresh memory in mind, and given the recent events in neighbouring Honduras (where they had to wait 21 days for results, amid protests and unrest that left 33 dead), the TSE decided to take no risks. In addition to the software solution used to announce winners only a few hours after voting ended, the TSE also utilized another technology solution to audit its own preliminary results. 

Mission accomplished. The preliminary count was published in real-time as the tallying reports were being processed. Although these results were not official, public opinion knew in less than 24 hours what the voting trends per party were, with 79% of the voting records processed. A hundred percent of the records were made available online 36 hours later. Quite a feat considering previous elections.

Although some politicians tried to belittle the work of the TSE and the companies that processed the data (especially after an incident was reported with the preferred votes in San Salvador and La Libertad), these results are auditable. And most importantly, the official results shown a month after the vote fully matched the preliminary count.

One additional benefit of the incorporation of technology to process preliminary count, was that once the unofficial results were made public, the TSE was able to begin their official count without much political pressure. Knowing what the voting trends were calmed the waters and allowed authorities to finish aggregating tallying reports.  

Unlike what transpired in 2015, authorities, political parties, the media and citizens were able to follow the preliminary count on a public website. It was precisely this level of transparency and auditability what allowed people to detect the inconsistencies found in the departments of San Salvador and La Libertad. Parties and citizens were able to compare the digitized voting records against the results being published.

Although the election observation missions from the European Union (EU) and the Organization of American States (OAS) acknowledged the complexity of El Salvador’s voting system, they praised the efforts made by TSE with the addition of technology. The modernization of all the processes to generate preliminary results, helped the country to overcome the issues of 2015.

These 2018 elections, held in the most densely populated country in the Americas, are a clear demonstration that implementing technology in the vote count -one of the most crucial phases of any election-, makes the overall process faster and more transparent. Results were available on Election Night and were audited in real time.

Tanzania weighing its e-voting options for October election

Many of the most exciting advances in electronic voting technology aren't necessarily being witnessed in first-world countries with high-end modern technology is a part of everyday life. Instead, it is in several developing nations around the world that e-voting, e-counting, and i-voting are receiving grassroots level support in part of a concerted effort to modernize these countries. 

Several countries in Africa have either already launched pilot projects in this field or are currently exploring the possibilities of doing so in upcoming elections. One example of particular note is Tanzania, where the country's general election is currently scheduled to take place this October. The National Electoral Commission (NEC) of Tanzania is being urged to not allow the country to be “left behind” in this “digital era,” being encouraged to implement electronic voting machines (EVMs), biometric voter registration (BVM), or a combination thereof. 

This follows in the example of other African countries that have already utilized some form of electronic-based technology as part of their democratic elections. As voter identification and voter verification are of critical importance, regular photo ID cards may not be sufficient to prevent voter fraud. To this end, the Tanzanian government has already decreed that a new biometric voting registration technology will be replacing the old voting system.

Indeed, the registration of voters using BVR is slated to start in February, well in advance of the October polls. Permanent Secretary Dr. Florens Turuka has indicated that the old voter identity cards will no longer be valid and all voters will need to register themselves through the new biometric system in order to qualify for voting in the upcoming general election. The system and technology have already been tested in three constituencies and every registered voter will receive new identification cards from the National Electoral Commission. 

Biometric voter registration and identification have already been used elsewhere in Africa, but some recent examples have been met with technical glitches and limited success. The system used in Kenya, which was co-developed by the Government of Canada and a sub-contractor called Morpho Canada, experienced numerous failures and some say this may have been caused by “massive fraud.” The elections in Ghana were marred with attempts at double registration and the theft of verification machines.

With both of these instances, the problems can likely be linked back to two culprits. First, human error and tampering can be problematic. Second, the systems may not have been properly secured and audited to ensure they would perform as needed for the elections in question. Tanzania needs to learn from the attempts in Kenya and Ghana, ensuring that they only contract respectable vendors with strong track records and that they ensure the proper security measures are in place to protect against those seeking to maliciously influence election results. 

As with Nigeria, Tanzania is still a transitioning nation and it will take time to move the country forward into the digital age for modernizing its democratic process. While it had its share of challenges, the recent elections in Namibia can also serve as a lesson and an example for modernizing elections on the African continent. Namibia was the first country in Africa to use direct-recording electronic voting machines. That is a major milestone. 

The Tanzanian election is only a few short months away. It will likely face many difficulties along the way, but a commitment to biometric voter authentication and the possible exploration into electronic voting machines or electronic counting of ballots represent positive strides in the right direction.