Groups press parallel count,
fear ‘failure of automation’

With the country’s first nationwide automated elections exactly two weeks away, business groups are pleading with the Commission on Elections to allow a parallel manual count of election results to allay fears of a failure of the automated count on May 10, 2010.

Officers of the Makati Business Club, the Management Association of the Philippines, and the Philippine Bar Association trooped to the Comelec office in Intramuros Monday morning, April 26, to convince the commissioners to agree to a parallel manual count, wherein votes cast in the precincts would also be manually counted before the machines transmit the results to the canvassing centers.

The commissioners reportedly listened politely, but made no commitments to the visitors.

In a forum just the day before, several groups including the MBC, Alyansa Agrikultura, and the PBA expressed alarm about a possible ‘failure of automation.’

The worries revolve around the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines that will be used to tally the votes in the upcoming elections. According to the groups, the machines cannot be trusted because “the Comelec removed many of the safeguards that were initially set in place – source code review, ultraviolet mark checking, authenticity check through digital signatures, etc.”

Information Technology expert Gus Lagman, lead convenor of poll watchdog TransparentElections.org, said PCOS machines could easily be used for cheating. “Automated Garci is possible,” he said, adding that a “cheating” program can be embedded inside the PCOS. The compact flash cards that will contain both the counting software as well as the precinct results can also be preloaded with votes, Lagman said. Digital signatures that serve as passwords for the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) in charge of the machines could also be made available to Smartmatic, allowing the provider to access the machines remotely and manipulate results.

But even if there were no hanky-panky involving the PCOS machines, technical issues with ballot printing could still derail the dream of automation. Roberto Verzola, secretary-general of poll watchdog Halalang Marangal (HALAL), cited the 1998 pilot automated elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), where automation failed in Sulu and Lanao del Sur. The ballots in those areas were manually counted because the ovals in the ballot –the bilog na hugis itlog – were misaligned. The Comelec blamed that snafu on “high-speed printing.”

According to Verzola, the errors occurred because of the rush in printing ballots, leaving operators unable to stop machines and correct misalignments. A similar issue also looms in the upcoming elections; already, printing errors due to misalignment have been spotted in the UV marks in ballots, leading the Comelec to disable UV mark checking on PCOS machines. Verzola said that if there are errors in UV marks, ballots could possibly also contain printing errors in ovals.

“Even if the PCOS have been tested, they might have been tested on ballots with perfectly-aligned ovals,” Verzola says. Misalignment, he said, can lead to false positives, wherein the machine counts an unmarked oval, or false negatives, wherein it fails to register a marked oval: an unintended dagdag-bawas.

The groups are pushing a parallel count that would perform an audit function for the machines. Under the proposal, an open manual count for only three positions – president, vice-president, and mayor or governor – would be conducted. If the difference in results for the manual count and the automated tally are less than 1%, the results will be transmitted electronically. Otherwise, a full manual count in that precinct will be done, and the results will be transported to the canvassing centers manually.

Former Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo, president of the Philippine Bar Association, doesn’t see the parallel count causing an inordinate delay in the counting. Unlike in manual counting in elections past, he says, challenging ballots will no longer be allowed or necessary, streamlining the counting process. “It wouldn’t be any different from a bank teller counting money,” he adds. The groups see this extra step adding less than three hours to the process, if the tallies match, and an additional two to three days if there are discrepancies. Lagman says that other logistical necessities, such as the printing and delivery of election returns for each precinct, is easy to execute, and they have already prepared a set of instructions for teachers who will serve in the BEI that the Comelec can adopt. Additional costs for the parallel manual count, according to the group, would run up to some P500 million, most of which would go to honoraria for BEI members.

Marcelo doesn’t see any legal obstacles to the proposal either. He points out that the law requires a continuity plan in the automated election system in case of “delay, obstruction, or nonperformance of the electoral process.” Because the PCOS did not go through a rigorous quality control process, he says, there is no way to know that the machine has a malfunction, except for conducting a parallel manual count.

The response from the Comelec to the proposal has been lukewarm, but the group is still working to secure a hearing with the commission en banc. Ernesto Ordoñez of the farmers’ group Alyansa Agrikultura says that their only aim is to “enhance the credibility” of the upcoming elections.

Marcelo, meanwhile, hoped all the effort is not for naught. “The hardest people to wake up are those who are already awake,” he said.