On Philippine's 2010 Automated Election
Recently, the Commission on Elections announced that on 2010 the Philippines will be having their first automated election. After the long process of preparations, budget and provider of the system has been named.
Smartmatic with its Filipino partner TIM won as the highest bidder and will be our provider for the Automated Election System (AES) and with the budget of 13.9 billion everything is rolling...
The Comelec promises a clean, honest and fast election...
If I will be ask if I want an automated election...
Yes, definitely!
But if ask if Philippines is ready for 2010 Automated election...
hmmm...I must say no...
What I found out being an IT student is that implementing a new system is not easy. Extensive and thorough research must be done.
Here are points that I want to share why I think our country is not yet ready for the automation in 2010.
CREDIBILITY
Credibility of the provider...
Not long after Smartmatic and TIM has been named as the highest bidder a conflict between the companies arise jeopardizing the automation of election. According to reports TIM president wanted a 500 million php 'up front' from its foreign partner, which Smartmatic took as deal breaker.
The very words of TIM president is this "If you give me a half a billion pesos, all of these problems will be solved.”
So what are the problems to be solved?
First point, at this very early stage of the implementation the Comelec experience a problem in pushing the contract. And even before finalization of contract providers are against each other.
FRAUD
First let us identify what are the Automate Election Systems planned to be used in the coming election. There are two technologies:
- Optical Mark Reader (OMR)
- Direct Recording Electronic (DRE)
The beauty of the old system of writing names of candidates voted for, public reading of votes in front of watchers and citizens, tallying and manual preparation of election returns was that it was visible.
At times there could have been fraud. But it was visible.
In the new OMR system voters will feed the ballot into the machine the next thing they will see is the printed election return. On the other hand DRE is a touch-screen or touch-pad machine. No paper ballot is necessary as the names of the candidates and the offices for which they are running will all be displayed on the computer screen. The voter directly enters his choices electronically into a memory cartridge, a diskette or a smart-card that will be added to the precinct, municipal, provincial and national tallies also electronically.
Whether votes were properly casted and counted we will not know.
Comelec claims that the Automated Election System (AES) cannot be hacked and the source code will be open for inspection. But the thing is we’re not talking about outside intrusions, the greatest danger of fraud in the 2010 automated elections will be if it come from insiders in Comelec and system providers.
Second point, automating the election doesn’t mean that it will be fraud free.
I know that one could argue if both type of election cannot be fraud free why not go for something which produces fast result?..
Actually, I am not against the automation of election...
I commend the government for coming up in such a good innovative idea for our election. Personally, I believe that we should have implemented this a long time ago...
However Commission on Election are rushing things up, there is a very little time intended for implementing the AES.
TIME AND END USER TRAINING
Testing cannot be done in just months, to get a reliable result this must be performed for years. To assure the voters of clean, honest and reliable election the AES must be tested if it has no flaws. Through testing we could also prevent fraud in the incoming elections offering more credibility.
Other than that, it’s only months away before election but still the citizen do not how to use the system. How will we vote if we do not know how to use the machine. We must consider that not all people know how to use a computer. If people will not be able to use the machine properly there might be a big chance that their votes will not be counted or will be invalid.
If something like this happens, losing opponents will most likely file a case and call for reelection.
There is no need to say that cost is a very important factor in this type of situation.
Therefore I believe that the Philippines is not yet ready for an automated election.
It is good that our government is changing into AUTOMATED ELECTION SYSTEM, I adhere that they continue to implement this for the next election. I suggest that they plan the implementation carefully towards a credible, reliable, fast and better election.
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