An interview with Comelec spokesman James Jimenez on automated elections
James Jimenez might well become a household name come May 2010. Just this week, he was seen as a special co-anchor of a late evening newscast on TV, then as a guest in an early morning TV show the day after. By mid-morning of the same day, he was on board a radio FM booth explaining the new automated election system. It all comes with the territory for this appropriately energetic and articulate Commission on Elections (Comelec) spokesperson.
In this interview, he expounds on the significance of technology in the upcoming elections, how the Comelec plans to capitalize on new media to disseminate information regarding the automated polls, and how Comelec is addressing the crisis of confidence in the institution.
Q: There has been a significant change in the landscape of communications technology in the country since the previous elections. How is Comelec capitalizing on new media, especially with regard to disseminating information and educating voters regarding the new election system?
JJ: The Comelec is really taking advantage of this new media frontier and using it as one of the pillars of our voter education campaign.The most important thing to remember is that Internet penetration is growing by the day. A lot of people who are very interested in the issue of election automation are also wired. They read the online papers and watch news video clips online. Significantly, those who are on the web and reading things like this are also those predisposed to share their knowledge with others. So, it’s an excellent time to be on the Internet, where you can deliver information and have it disseminate itself practically with very minimal intervention. Compared to print ads or TV commercials, information can be put up in the Internet at minimal cost and that information never disappears. Moreover, you are able to reach this massive and wonderfully sharing audience.
Q: I understand that the Comelec has set up websites as part of your information drive. Can you tell us more about these projects and the core messages you want to put across?
JJ: There’s an institutional website at www.ibanangayon.ph, which is really a straight information website with a 2.0 flavor, so to speak. It essentially has the information everyone needs to understand how the system works, how it’s going to be rolled out, how it can affect their voting experience. There’s also going to be a community site at www.bagongbotante.ph, where we foster discussions, talk about issues peer to peer.
We believe it’s essential to have this second site because whereas the institutional website delivers crucial information, the community website allows our users to have an experiential appreciation of the new election system. Nowadays, people are unlikely to respond to just being told what to do and rather more likely to respond to testimonials by their peers. It’s more about how your community experiences a particular event. The website strives to foster a sense of community and ownership and the feeling that we all have a stake to make the next elections work.
Having the Comelec online is not just about delivering information, it’s also about receiving feedback. It’s good for people to have someone to shout at and to know that someone is on the other end getting an earful of their “ALL CAPS” who are struggling to find the answer for them. It is important for people to know that the Comelec is no longer
a monolithic distant presence that just imposes its will on you. Comelec is now an organization that listens. Prick us and we bleed, tickle us and we laugh. But we will talk to you.
Q: The new automated election system calls for a massive education campaign essentially on how the polls are going to be conducted. How is the Comelec going about such immense undertaking?
JJ: Actually the information is very simple: fill up the ballot correctly and slide it into the counting machine. The problem is that you have 47 million students to teach. It’s not a question of how complicated the message is, it’s a question of how big your classroom has suddenly become. So, what we are doing is decentralizing voter education to cover more ground. Right now, somewhere in the province or maybe some part of the city is talking to a group of students or the media and explaining how automation works.
Moreover, on election day, we are going for 100 percent coverage; every single voter who comes to the precinct will receive instruction on how to vote using the modern ballot. Precinct halls will also be lined with reminders on how to vote. Add to that printed collaterals, like posters, streamers and whatnot, all over the place for maximum visibility on election day for the set of instructions to fill out the ballot correctly.
Q: How about the information needed by the teachers overseeing voting precincts?
JJ: Regarding the teachers, the load is not as big as people seem to think. Previous elections required three teachers per precinct. At about 250,000 precincts, we normally trained around 750,000 members of the board of election inspectors (BEIs). But now, we only have to train BEIs for 80,136 precincts. Assuming a BEI size of four per precinct, the number comes at just around 32,000; that’s significantly less than the 750,000 that we used to train. And again, we are training simultaneously as a decentralized operation. Also, the load of each trainer is actually lighter, allowing us to do much more in the time that we have.
Q: But will not the BEI training involve complicated technical knowledge that requires more time to learn?
JJ: It is more difficult to operate and understand a simple gadget as a digital voice recorder than to understand how to operate the counting machines. You can actually fit the instructions for operating the counting machines on a post-it ® note.
Q: There seems to be a popular perception doubting the integrity of the system, especially because part of the process would supposedly be “in the dark.” Some would say that it takes away the public aspect of counting the votes. How do you address this argument?
JJ: I’ve heard about this. They supposedly want to guarantee secret voting and open counting. First of all, even in a manual count, you have no idea what the teacher is reading. The truth of the matter is counting starts at 6 pm and ends at 5 am the following day. That’s an entire night when you don’t know when some armed men are going to go through the door or when the lights are going to go out as an opportunity for someone to steal the ballots. We are replacing that with a system that will count the votes in under half a minute. It removes the stress on the teachers, the vulnerability of the system due the time element and the issue of ballot appreciation. You remove threats to the integrity of the system because the BEIs could not be bribed. Teachers are very trustworthy, but anyone put under extreme circumstances can act in ways that can surprise you.
It’s a secret counting to the extent that you don’t have someone pulling out the ballots one at a time. But it does not mean that the ballot can no longer be referred to. If we really need the assurance, we can go back to the ballots and verify the electronic count with the hand count. In the previous system, when you do go back to the ballot, you’re most likely to have a hard time deciphering the ballot.
All in all, you migrate from an old system to a new one. You lose some of the reassurances of the old and you gain the reassurances of the new. They are not
necessarily the same. But just because you don’t have the security blanket of the past doesn’t mean that your future is not secure. Automation is secure; it’s verifiable. And you know what you’re getting. Just because some of the features of the old system are not with the new, doesn’t make the new untrustworthy.
Q: There are also concerns regarding the reliability and accuracy of the counting machines. There has been news regarding shift in manufactures from Taiwan to Shanghai as well as supposedly dubious trial runs. Would you like to clarify these issues?
JJ: Actually, the team that manufactures the machines in Taiwan is the same team that manufactures the machines in Shanghai. It’s just the physical plant has changed. As far as the individual machines are concerned, each of the units that come to the Philippines will be 100 percent tested. It will be a large battery of tests. There will be accuracy testing, reliability testing, stress testing. They’ll be tested under harsh environmental conditions, among others. If a machine fails, it gets sent back. At the end of the day, when the machines are all in, all of them would have passed the testing.
The tests will be conducted by technical experts from the DOST, the advisory council and two observer slots. It is important to note, however, that this is ultimately an exercise for the people and not just techheads and geeks. Automation is not the monopoly of experts.
This system using these types of machines has actually been used in successful elections in New York in the US as well as in Ontario and New Brunswick in Canada. The system has certification from these jurisdictions that the project went well. So, we know we can rely on these certifications by foreign governments.
Q: What are the contingency measures in place in the event of incidents like machine breakdowns or power outages?
JJ: We have contingency measures. There is a possibility of replacement of the machines in case it malfunctions. The protocol calls for the replacement to be done within two hours from the time the decision is made. Actually, there are several layers of backups, but the ultimate backup is that we can go manual because there is a ballot. In a nightmare scenario, where someone shoots the machines and all known existing replacements, we can go manual.
Q: The Comelec has long had a reputation of being very mismanaged and lacking transparency. How do you address the crisis of confidence in the Comelec?
JJ: The Comelec has been mistrusted as an organization long before I was born, in fact. The distrust for the Comelec is admittedly a huge problem. The thing with that is: you have a problem with people believing you know what you’re doing and then you go ahead and do something that someone else tells you to do. In that situation, kung saan sumusunod ka lang sa sinabi ng ibang tao, you only prove one thing: that you know how to follow instructions. In order to prove your credibility, what you need to do is to do what you decide to be the right thing and prove that it was in fact the right thing to do. And that’s what the Comelec is doing. We pave the road to the future. This is how we’re going to do it and we’re going to prove to you that we are right to have decided to take this road. And that’s how we’re going to address our credibility issue. We’ll show the people that we’ve made the decision, we have the will to stick to that decision, and at the end of the day, that we were right in making that decision.
Q: There are reports that the Comelec is working on a very tight schedule and in fact is a month behind schedule. People might think the scenario is reminiscent to the 2004 polls when automation was dropped less than four months before election day. How do you assess the likelihood of automated elections not pushing through?
JJ: In any project, you have a timeline. And in that timeline, you have milestones. But you’d be like 10 kinds of incompetent if you only had that timeline. When you plan, you
plan for slippage and for the unexpected. We are still within our tolerance. We may not have met some milestones that we published, but we’re not irretrievably behind. I would not give full credence to the claim of a month delay. We are probably delayed a couple of weeks maybe. Nevertheless, we are still well within the timetable. We will still finish on time and we will have elections.
Q: This being the Philippines, one can expect that complaints would be raised at the slightest opportunity. Some maybe valid, others probably a mere nuisance at best. How is the Comelec preparing for this?
JJ: First of all, it’s a new system. So, you have to expect that some people would try to break it and prove that it didn’t work. But at the same time, we expect that the system we are rolling out will stand up to these protests. We expect that the system will prove to be fully functional, credible and accurate. That’s how we see the lay of the land unfolding. To prepare for it, we have been very transparent from the very beginning. That’s our biggest defense. The people know what we’re doing, nothing’s going on under the table and everything’s up and out. On top of that, we have confidence that the system itself is sound. And because of that, we are looking forward to post-elections to prove that the system actually works.
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