With poll automation, ARMM fraud
shifts from the count to the vote

IN ONE POLLING PRECINCT in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, poll watchers looked on in horror as a local leader locked himself in the precinct and proceeded to shade ballots meant for other voters.

The local official was able to shade a stack of ballots up to four inches thick, possibly amounting to more than a hundred ballots. When the official was finished, the members of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) helpfully and dutifully fed the pre-shaded ballots into the precinct count optical scan machines.

In other precincts across the ARMM, vote buying was reportedly rampant. Ballot secrecy was virtually non-existent all over the ARMM, as some voters were being coached by as many as four people at a time on which name to shade on his ballot.

The automation of the elections may have helped solve some of the persistent problems in elections in the ARMM. For decades, polls in the region were perceived to be a joke, as both local and national officials try to manipulate the counting of the votes on the local and national levels.

But with the counting now automated, poll fraud in the ARMM is shifting from the counting to the voting.

The Citizens Coalition for ARMM Electoral Reform (CCARE), a local poll watchdog based in the ARMM, revealed this new shift in poll fraud as local candidates try to find ways to adjust to the modernization of the elections.

“Nagupgrade nga ang botohan, nag uupgrade rin naman ang dayaan,” said CCARE secretary general Jumda Saba-ani. (We may have upgraded the voting process, but now they are also upgrading the cheating.)

Saba-ani said that while poll automation has made it more difficult for local and national candidates to cheat in the counting (at least for now), the results of the elections are still vulnerable because the candidates are going to the very core of the elections: the voter.

Whereas before, the voter was dismissed by some local candidates as unnecessary because they can cheat in the counting anyway, now, voters are being manipulated, harassed, bought off, or simply misrepresented.

In Sulu, for example, Saba-ani said their volunteers could only watch in horror as a local candidate’s father, himself a former local leader, locked himself in the precinct along with the BEIs at nine in the morning on election day, or just two hours after the polls opened. The elder then proceeded to shade all the ballots that he could find, while the BEIs looked on cooperatively, and while the poll watchers who were locked outside peered through the windows. Afterwards, the BEIs then fed the tampered ballots into the PCOS machine, where the ballots were properly counted in favor of his son.

Needless to say, the son won in the election.

Saba-ani however refused to name the officials involved because of fears for the safety of their volunteers.

In other cases, Saba-ani noted how ballot secrecy was violated “in almost all the precincts” in the ARMM. Voters are supposed to be able to vote in secret so that they are not intimidated by the candidates. However, in almost all the ARMM areas, this principle was violated. In some cases, Saba-ani said that voters were being coached by up to four people.

“Ang vote-buying, talamak rin, even inside the precinct,” Saba-ani said. (Vote buying was also rampant, even inside the precinct.)

Other persistent problems include the intimidation of voters and watchdog groups by politicians and their private armed men, and the hauling of voters to the polling precincts.

While these incidents have always been present in past elections, Saba-ani said these violations were more prevalent now because of the need by local candidates to offset their inability to manipulate the count. CCARE says that while there were complaints of PCOS machines bogging down and of some machines failing to transmit their results because of the lack of a cellphone signal, the count was an improvement over the 2010 and 2007 elections.

Taguntong says that while CCARE sees the need for more improvements in the 2016 elections, the watchdog group was happy in that elections were “relatively” peaceful and orderly in the ARMM. In fact, Taguntong says proudly, there was only one case where a town declared a total failure of elections. In previous elections, failure of elections was a fairly common event.

In addition, Taguntong said that violent incidents were reduced significantly, although there were still many incidents that would shock those unfamiliar with ARMM elections. There were reports of intimidation and harassment of both voters, teachers, poll watchers, and watchdog groups, with candidates smashing cellphones of poll watchers who try to take pictures of poll fraud. Yet Taguntong says, by their records, poll violence may have gone down by as much as 70 percent compared to previous elections.

“Before, may armed confrontations and continuous shooting incidents ng mga private armies,” Taguntong said. “Now there is less of that.”

One interesting trend, Taguntong relates, is what may be called the “democratization” of vote buying. Before, only the local ward leaders earn during elections by collecting money from candidates, hauling in voters, and manipulating the counting. But in the 2013 elections, candidates were forced to fork money over to actual voters to make sure that they vote for the candidates. If only for this reason, Taguntong says, money that otherwise would have gone to local officials was spread more evenly to the voting public.