“It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting” says playwright Tom Stoppard. The playwright might not be referring to an automated election system as incidents of irregularities continue to arrive in , seven days after the May 10 automated elections.

It was exactly a week ago when  the Comelec revealed the first batch of  results on TV. It stunned me. The speed  was amazingly fast that I could barely speak when #juanvote came live at GNN shortly thereafter.  Days before, a bleak scenario of a failed automated election system (AES)  unfolded. Anxious voters thought that elections should be moved after the discovery of the malfunctioning Compact Flash (CF) Cards a few days before May 10. Even Loida Nicolas-Lewis asked “President Barack Obama to investigate the alleged questionable activities of Smartmatic in the US, and its implications on tomorrow’s national elections”.   IT expert Roberto Verzola, secretary-general of Halalang Marangal, claimed “he was not convinced that a full system audit had actually been done”. Based on Verzola’s estimates, the May 10 polls only had a 25 percent chance of success.