June 29th, 2010 by Malayang Halalan
Makati Representative Teodoro Locsin has released a report which dealt severe criticism against the recently concluded nationwide automated elections.
So, how exactly is Locsin going to stop poll automation in 2013?
On the eve of President Benigno Noynoy Aquino III’s inauguration, the headline on Philippine Daily Inquirer says “Locsin: May polls flawed”.
Locsin is the chair of the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms, which on Sunday released a report based on its hearings that painted a far from ideal picture of the recently concluded automated elections.
The hearings took up the complaints of local candidates who claimed that they lost because of electoral fraud.
Interviewed over ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC), Locsin said Monday that cheating done under the automated system could be untraceable, unlike in manual elections where money and hard work could uncover a fake ballot.
Somewhere in San Juan, somebody might be saying “See, I told you so!” and someone in Cubao might have seen a flash of inspiration, a glimmer of hope. Perhaps, somebody will get some boot-taaaay tonight or the famed “insertion” that Senator Aquilino Pimentel so ungraciously accused another colleague of committing in his nuptial chamber.
But beyond the apparent doubt that it casts on the legitimacy of Aquino’s victory at the polls, the crucial question we have to answer is perhaps, “What are we going to do about it?”
One “flaw” that Locsin brought up is that the PCOS machines could be reset to zero:
Locsin said vote-rigging could have been done by resetting the PCOS machines to zero and then scanning ballots again. This was known through the explanations of Smartmatic, the technology provider of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
“They should have told me though that their machine was capable of being reset to zero. I have no idea it was that easy to do it. The reason also why none of us, including myself, ever thought about that is that the critics of automation kept focusing on other issues,” he said.
If that is true, then the next question should be whether such was actually DONE on election day?
Locsin points to the fact that voting in some places occurred at 10PM and therefore could have used to send in results that would have swung the elections one way or the other for certain candidates. Granting that this is true, the next question would be, how many such machines transmitted at 10:00 PM? Moreover, who was the winner in those machine’s results?
The thing is, did the “flaw’ that Locsin is pointing to occur in so many precincts that it drastically affected the outcome of the elections? Did it happen and affect the outcome of local elections? Did it AFFECT THE OUTCOME OF RESULTS IN THE FIRST DISTRICT OF MAKATI?
Anyhow, Locsin goes on to say:
He also said cheating under automated and manual polls was very different, with manual polls providing a way to uncover concrete evidence.
“The difference between cheating in manual is that at the end of the road, if you have the money and the time, you can check whether the handwritten ballot is real or not,” he said.
Examining manual ballots is a flawed operation and just as problematic as examining allegedly fake signatures. Perhaps what Locsin is really pointing out is that with enough money in the pockets of the right people and a battery of election lawyers, you can find flaws that could invalidate the votes of your political rivals.
In anycase, Locsin is in a rather bad position to air these complaints… He was, after all, among the chief architects of Poll automation along with fellow former ACCRA lawyer, Senator Richard Gordon. He now seems to put the blame on poll automation critics for not spotting this flaw… a fact which shows that the critics were useless and that the oversight committee was ignorant of certain crucial aspects of poll automation.
“They should have told me though that their machine was capable of being reset to zero. I have no idea it was that easy to do it. The reason also why none of us, including myself, ever thought about that is that the critics of automation kept focusing on other issues,” he said.
Hindsight is always 20-20…
And oh, by the way, how do you suppose Congressman Locsin will be able to oppose the automation of the elections in 2013 after his wife (and political proxy) Maria Lourdes Locsin lost to Monique Lagdameo? Is it possible that Lagdameo will also act as proxy and support Locsin’s stand on Poll Automation?
Related Posts:
June 8th, 2010 by Malayang Halalan
So, about a month after the polls closed in the Philipppine’s first ever automated elections, we have yet to know the official results from the Congressional count.
It is rather ironic that the fastest electoral count in Philippine history (all thanks to automated counting and canvassing) has been slowed down quite a bit by congressmen protesting alleged irregularities in poll automation and the tedium of a manual tally of the COCs.
In any case, the only hold up after weeks of waiting for the official Congress vetted results of the elections is the COC of Lanao del Sur and this is because it is holding special elections.
On the ears of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, it says that the Comelec has tallied 277 out of the 278 COCs and this makes for a more definite estimation of the results of the recently concluded automated polls.
Noynoy Aquino has 15,072,053 votes and Jejomar Binay has 14,501,371 votes. Noynoy beat his closest rival, Joseph Ejercito Estrada by about six million votes and Binay beat Mar Roxas by a scant 600,000 votes.
If Mar Roxas insists on challenging the results of the VP race in an electoral tribunal, he’ll probably go the way of Loren Legarda. But unlike in Loren’s case, I think the case will be more easily concluded — granting that no legal maneuver is made to manually count the votes, which would open a can of worms such as ballot appreciation.
Ballot appreciation, which means looking at each of the ballots cast in a particular precinct or precincts and on the basis of what it looks like, individual ballots may be deemed valid or invalid — nevermind if the machine that was supposed to count it accepted it or not, given the parameters of its programs.
The thesis behind a manual appreciation of the ballots is that the machines may have failed to recognize votes or erroneously recognized votes.
What Mar’s camp will most likely try to do in such a situation is to try to invalidate as many votes as possible that were cast in favor of Binay or salvage as many votes for Roxas as possible. Maybe both will be done at the same time.
Electoral protests, however fiery or insidious it may be, are no measure of the quality of success that automated elections has garnered.
Related Posts:
May 31st, 2010 by Malayang Halalan
Joker: Cut debates, fast-track canvass
‘Congress not board of inquiry’
By Christine Avendaño, Gil C. Cabacungan Jr.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:54:00 05/31/2010
MANILA, Philippines—The counting of votes for president and vice president by Congress should be fast-tracked by doing away with long debates on the canvassing process and on allegations of electronic fraud, Sen. Joker Arroyo said Sunday.
“The people already know who the winners of the May 10 presidential and vice presidential polls are. What is lacking is the blessings of Congress and what is blocking Congress from giving its blessings is this problem (of long debates),” he said.
Arroyo underscored the need for Congress to do its duty of proclaiming the president and vice president before June 30, the last day of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in Malacañang.
He said further delays in the proclamation of the winners could lead to speculations of a military takeover. “That is the last thing we need now. We need stability, that the country is united,” he said.
No-proclamation scenario
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said his personal target was for a proclamation on June 15 at the earliest and on June 28 at the latest. The joint canvassing committee earlier set a deadline of June 4 for the wrapping up of the canvassing.
Enrile reiterated that he would not allow a “no-proclamation” scenario.
He said on dzBB radio that Congress would be able to do its job, pointing out that the joint canvassing committee had thought it could canvass 30 certificates of canvass (CoCs) a day, but it was able to complete 133 CoCs in just two days last week.
Several hours after the elections, the public already had a sense of who the winners in the presidential and vice presidential races were based on the electronic transmissions to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) by the counting machines.
But the Comelec stopped the tallies on May 11 after getting a warning from lawyers of presidential candidates trailing in the count that it was usurping the functions of Congress in counting the votes for the top two elective posts.
Unofficial count
In the unofficial count for the presidential race, Sen. Benigno Aquino III is leading former President Estrada by some 5.1 million votes. Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay, Estrada’s running mate, is ahead of Sen. Manuel Roxas II, Aquino’s team mate, by more than 800,000 votes.
“We should find out a means to fast-track the canvassing process,” Arroyo said.
He said the mandate of Congress, as the national board of canvassers, was to count the votes and not to be a “board of inquiry” that would hear complaints of poll fraud.
He noted that the congressional oversight committee on automated elections led by Rep. Teodoro Locsin was already looking into the poll fraud allegations.
Further delays
Despite Arroyo’s proposal, the canvassing of votes for the top two elective posts is expected to be delayed further.
The reason: Members of the joint canvassing committee of Congress are seeking another public demonstration on the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines to prove that these are tamper-proof before resuming the count.
Speaker Prospero Nograles and Enrile agreed to defer the counting of the remaining 147 CoCs out of the total of 278 until after the supplier of the machines shall have shown to Congress the machines’ security features—from voting and counting to transmission of results.
The demonstration will be done in the main session hall of the Batasang Pambansa.
“I have it on record that I wanted them at the proper time to walk us through the trail. After that, we should be convinced that the machine is tamper-proof,” Nograles said.
However, Nograles said that if the PCOS machines had been corrupted by human intervention, the ballot boxes should provide “a built-in trail or ballot images to be able to catch or follow the flow of votes up to the transmission of results in the memory card.”
“The security features will help us determine whether there is hacking or tampering or cheating by human intervention,” he said.
Nograles and Enrile agreed last week to wrap up the canvassing of the CoCs from local and overseas absentee voting before tackling the lingering questions of some members of the joint committee on alleged irregularities in the automated polls.
Resumption
Enrile said the canvassing of the votes would probably resume Wednesday to give way to Monday’s “simulation” of the PCOS machines and the ensuing debates.
“We just want to erase doubts and fears of the people,” he said of the demonstration of how the machines worked.
Enrile said he wanted people to understand the process because he believed that the results from the machines could not be intercepted.
Arroyo said on dzBB radio that if he would have his way, he did not want the PCOS demonstration or debates to take place anymore.
He said the law was clear when it said that Congress should use the electronically transmitted CoCs as the basis for proclaiming the winners.
He said that there was no need for the canvassing body to compare the electronically transmitted CoCs to the manually transmitted CoCs, as prescribed in the approved rules of the canvassing committee.
Arroyo said the document used in proclaiming the 12 senators were electronically transmitted CoCs that were counted by the Comelec.
He wondered why Congress should use two documents or use a different procedure in proclaiming the new president and vice president.
“What happens now if the two documents have different results?” Arroyo said, prompting dzBB reporter Nimfa Rogado Ravelo to say that the rules required then for the canvassing committee to go through the election returns.
Arroyo said he did not think there was a deliberate attempt to delay the canvassing and proclamation. The delays, he said, were due to some confusion on the canvassing process.
Related Posts:
April 24th, 2010 by Malayang Halalan
Comelec celebrates after printing of 50.9M ballots
abs-cbnNEWS.com | 04/23/2010 4:27 PM
MANILA, Philippines – Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Melo is now more optimistic that the automated election will push through with the printing of all ballots for the May 10 elections.
“With the ballots here, there will be elections. There will be no failure of elections. We will proceed with the elections,” Melo told reporters at the National Printing Office (NPO).
A total of 50,850,939 ballots were printed for next month’s polls.
In an earlier announcement, Smartmatic-TIM spokesman Gene Gregorio said the printing of all the ballots was completed before dawn Friday.
Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said the ballots printed reached more than the 50.7 million earlier announced by the poll body because the new figure includes ballots printed for the automated overseas absentee voting (OAV) in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Larrazabal said provinces in Mindanao will be the first destinations of the ballots. Delivery will start Saturday, he added.
The ballots will be put in vacuum-sealed plastic packages and then shipped directly to municipal treasury offices.
In previous elections, ballots were delivered to the provincial treasurer’s office, but since the ballots will be bundled based on the polling centers and precincts, they can be delivered directly to municipal offices.
The Comelec has urged voters to properly use the ballots on election day because they would be provided with only one copy.
There were cases during mock elections where ballots were not accepted by the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines because they were not properly marked or had been crumpled.
Peace and order
Melo said that with the completion of the printing, the Comelec’s only problem is the delivery of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) voting machines and the deployment of special ballot boxes.
He also virtually handed over the fate of the automated elections to the military and the police.
Melo said that with almost all of the poll body’s preparation for the automated elections nearly done, peace and order during election day should now be the main concern.
“We hope and pray on election day, there will be peace and order here to be supervised by the PNP (Philippine National Police) and the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines),” the poll chief said.
The PNP said that chokepoints and checkpoints around the election hotspot province of Masbate were doubled with the delivery of PCOS machines on Friday.
It said the PCOS machines, loaded in 2 10-wheeler trucks of Air21, were successfully delivered to a hub in Masbate City.
Metro Manila police chief Director Roberto Rosales, meanwhile, said in a press statement that the police will use Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices to monitor the transport of the voting machines, the ballots and ballot boxes.
Rosales said the Metro Manila police will transport 7,555 PCOS machines and ballot boxes, 6.13 million ballots and other election paraphernalia from the Comelec warehouse to an assigned hub or sub-hub.
From the hub, the election paraphernalia, including the machines will be deployed to 743 polling centers all over Metro Manila.
He said that the hauling of the PCOS machines, ballot boxes and other election paraphernalia will start on Wednesday (April 28).
Rosales assured the voting public that the PNP and the AFP have prepared measures to guarantee the integrity of the ballots.
“Keeping the PCOS machines and the ballots safe and secure is just one of our many tasks so that we could have an honest, orderly and peaceful elections here in Metro Manila,” he said. — with reports from Ryan Chua, ABS-CBN News and Noel Alamar, radio dzMM
Related Posts:
April 12th, 2010 by Malayang Halalan
(from donavictorina.blogspot.com)
Former Metro Manila Development Authority chairman and Bagumbayan vice-presidential candidate Bayani “BF” Fernando has been consistently topping the weekly online mock elections in Facebook, a popular social networking site in the Philippines.
In the latest two-week poll done by Facebook Election 2010 Application, which lasted from March 18-April 1, Fernando led all VP candidates with 45 percent of the votes cast, followed by Perfecto Yasay with 25 percent and Mar Roxas a far third with 13 percent.
The previous online weekly election rounds also saw the former MMDA chairman leading his rivals in the top spot. Bimbo Cabochan, Internet marketing campaign expert and Fernando’s new media head welcomes the overwhelming support from the online sector, “BF is very happy with the news. This just confirms that more and more voters are now thinking and basing their decisions on track record. We’ve always been hopeful of the online community since most Internet users are opinion leaders and they cannot be swayed by gimmicks, surveys or heavy advertising.”
Meanwhile, Senator Dick Gordon has also caught up with his presidential rivals in the same mock elections. For the first time in 14 rounds, Gordon led all candidates with 44 percent followed by Eddie Villanueva and Gilbert Teodoro with 27 percent and 19 percent respectively. Noynoy Aquino placed 4th with 6 percent while Manny Villar landed on the 5th spot with only 2 percent of the votes.
In the senatorial race, Miriam Defensor-Santiago led all candidates with 48 percent of the voters choosing her. Rounding up the top 12 are Pia Cayetano, Bongbong Marcos, Frank Drilon, Juan Ponce Enrile, Ralph Recto, Kata Inocencio, Alex Tinsay, Gilbert Remulla, Risa Hontiveros, Sonia Roco, and Serge Osmeña.
Related Posts:
