The Philippine Online Chronicles

The news that poll preparations may be delayed by one month is not comforting to most voters.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) expects  the delivery of around 40,000 of the machines by the end of December and another 40,000 machines before the end of January. There are quite a number of apprehensions now that May 2010 Elections is just 180 days away.

Voters fear failure of the elections, failure to produce valid poll results, such as ending up with no proclaimed winners for president, vice president, new senators and congressmen—with nobody outside the bureaucracy to run the government by June 30, 2010.

A number of tasks are not in place. What are the challenges facing Comelec as of November 11, 2009?

1. Comelec needs to hire and train Information Technology (IT) specialists and to coordinate with the Department of Education for the training of teachers on the automated process.

There are currently 80 Comelec IT personnel being trained to test the machines while 100 more will be needed next year. Smartmatic is also hiring its own IT people for next year's elections.

2.Before  the hiring can be done, general instructions need to be promulgated.

Since the Comelec IT personnel are still testing the machines, it will take some time to draft the instructions.

3. Time and motion studies needed in actual classroom scenario.

They will cluster five precincts for one machine with 200 voters each.  But there is no classroom that large enough to fit them all.

4. Filling the ballot

Does Comelec know how long it will take from Step 1 to the final step? Filling the ballot alone depends on the speed and accuracy of the voter. The ballot is approximately 23 inches long, back to back, because they have to put all the candidates' names there–5 candidates for president, 5 candidates for vice president, 60 candidates for senator, 170 party list groups, 5 candidates for governor, vice governor, mayor, vice mayor, 60 names for counselors–all of their names should be there.

5. Mode of transmittal

How will they transmit the results? Internet? Cable? Landline? Cellphone? We don’t know yet.

Things get more complicated. The Concerned Citizens' Movement, led by lawyer Harry Roque, filed on November 9 a supplemental motion for reconsideration requesting the Supreme Court to consider its views  that the automation contract had been breached after the parties involved failed to provide budget for satellite communications in phone-deprived areas and after the production of the machines was transferred from a company in Taiwan to another in Shanghai,China.

Solutions are now provided  to a few concerns raised on the automated process, which gives us some assurance that the government is indeed doing something about the problems.

1.  If the delivery of machines are delayed, the worst case scenario would be partial automation in some areas

Comelec Chair Jose Melo said the worst case scenario is not so bleak,  They may resort to the same contingency plan adopted in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao last year, where they gathered the ballots in some areas and brought them to a central system to be counted.

2.  Comelec devised a way to make the ballots easier to read

The ballot will be divided into sections that will be delineated by a colored border. The sections will be colored blue for president, vice president, congressmen, provincial governor, and councilors; and green for senators, party-list groups, provincial board members, and municipal mayors.

3. Voters need to shade at least 50 percent of the ovals situated  next to the name of the candidate when voting.

The scenario may seem bleak at this point but we can’t dwell on the possibility that the elections might fail, or else voters might be discouraged. At least we know the problems, and everyone concerned will try to prevent them from happening and be vigilant.

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