The Philippine Online Chronicles

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) and its partner, Smartmatic-TIM, are in a state of euphoria. The Comelec, including the media, played up the rapid delivery of results of the country’s first-ever nationwide automated elections that shell-shocked many candidates. They described the rate of counting as the fastest in the country’s history by comparing apples and oranges, between the past and the present, between manual and automated systems of elections.

“It was faster than you can say Garci” was how Comelec Chair Jose Melo described the counting, in a report. Melo was referring to disgraced former commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, who was accused of colluding with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to rig the 2004 presidential election.

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez, in the same report, said that defeated candidates were “a little shell-shocked” when they realized that they had lost the race in just a few hours.

“The candidates, all of them, were taken by surprise,” Jimenez said.

The apparent shock was immediately utilized by Melo saying the fast count was a vindication and restored credibility of the Comelec.

“It speaks of the credibility on the part of the count and the Comelec,” Melo said, adding that the automated elections system “was not corrupted, was not invaded.”

Commissioner Rene Sarmiento was also quick in saying that the fast delivery of results was “a big step forward towards the restoration of the credibility.”

Praises, apologies

There are also some quarters that are obviously contented and ecstatic over the huge lead of Liberal Party standard-bearer Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, but not necessarily convinced over the general conduct of the automated elections, and have chosen to be mum on the irregularities. Political observers and business groups exaggerated the fast delivery of results, hailed the elections as a “success,” and even apologized to Comelec commissioners and Smartmatic.

“I was wrong about the automation, I was wrong about the Comelec commissioners, I was wrong about Jose Melo, I was wrong about Smartmatic. And, boy, am I absolutely ecstatic to be so. They did a fantastic job despite an un-fantastic past. I owe them my deepest apologies,” Inquirer columnist Conrado De Quiros said in his column published two days after the elections.

Makati Business Club (MBC) executive director Alberto Lim congratulated the Comelec for the success of the elections while insisting that “our fears were justified.”

“It was not managed properly, but the outcome was all right. They just got lucky,” he said.

Such hype on the fast rate of counting has relegated to the sidelines reports of poll irregularities prior to, during, and immediately after May 10’s automated elections documented by election monitors.

Poll irregularities

Those on cloud nine, like the Comelec and Smartmatic, are now slowly being shrouded by a cloud of doubt after poll problems are coming out one by one.

In a report by inquirer.net, the lawyer of former president Joseph Estrada is set to raise issues of “irregularities” in the recent automated elections when Congress convenes on May 24 to canvass the votes for president and vice president.

George Garcia said that in Masbate, for instance, the random manual audit conducted in some precincts in the province did not tally with the results of the automation. There were also reported irregularities in San Juan City, which is considered Estrada’s turf.

He also dismissed the idea that the discrepancy was caused by human error saying, “It’s the flash cards.”

Another discrepancy was discovered by an election monitor, votereportph.org, showing that the Total Registered Voters printed on the National Canvass Report is 153,902,003.

“While COMELEC has 50,723,733 registered voters, the server being used to canvass votes for party list and senators generated 153,902,003 registered voters,” a post at the votereportph.org shows.

SMARTMATIC replied that the huge discrepancy will not affect the canvassing results.

“But from a technical standpoint, important data like the registered voter should be system generated. If the system spews out such number, it means they have that equivalent number of registered voters. Unless they are manually entering such number which is more dangerous,” the post said.

“Also note from the images below that out of the 23 transmitted municipal canvass not a single ballot was rejected by any of the PCOS machine. The number of voters who actually voted is equal to the total valid ballots counted,” it added.

Kontra Daya: Initial report

The election watchdog Kontra Daya said the Comelec cannot claim success because the country’s first automated national polls were characterized by widespread cases of malfunctioning precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines and long queues at polling precincts. In many polling centers, elections have been delayed due to technical glitches, aggravated by slow and poorly organized voting procedures, Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) members still familiarizing themselves with the automated system, and IT consultants lacking skills. In some areas, problems were aggravated by power failure.  There were also reports of poll-related violence in several areas, mostly in Luzon and Mindanao.

“The Comelec cannot claim success because of the many problems encountered by the voters today. Comelec should at the very least apologize to the voting public for the poor preparations of the automated polls,” the poll watchdog said.

Kontra Daya, which closely monitored the conduct of the May 10 polls, noted the following major trends:

• PCOS failures were monitored across the country, many in Luzon, with several reports coming from NCR;
• First-time voters disenfranchised as they are not included in the voter’s list, several incidents monitored in NCR;
• Disgruntled voters leaving the polling centers due to slow voting process, many cases reported throughout the country;
• Several incidents of pre-shaded ballots, vote buying, etc in Luzon, mostly in NCR, and many in Mindanao;
• Several cases of election-related violence monitored nationwide, many in Mindanao;
• Delayed voting is prevalent nationwide, with the delays reaching as late as 12 noon like the cases in Lubao and Bacolor and Pampanga; 1 to 2 hours of delays in voting were common; and
• Sporadic power failures were also monitored, contributing to delays in voting.

It ain’t over yet

Lawyer Christian Monsod, a former Comelec chairman, reminded officials that the elections are far from over.

“Political normalcy is setting in and, for many people, the 2010 election is over. It is not,” he said.

Monsod pointed out that the process entailed four stages: voting and counting, transmission, canvassing and proclamation, and the post-election audit process.

While the voting and transmission are almost over, the canvassing and proclamation are “just beginning,” and the audit process “still has to be done,” he said.

Monsod, who is also a founder and executive committee member of the Legal Network for Truthful Election (Lente), also cautioned against the euphoria brought about by the fast count.

“There are two clarifications we want to make on certain statements about automation. The first one is that ‘speed deters fraud.’ That is false. Only speed with proper safeguards deters fraud,” Monsod said in a separate report by the Inquirer.

Monsod noted that the voters liked the speed of the count and no longer had to worry about having to watch the votes being counted manually in the precincts.

“Voters trusted that the machines would count correctly. This emphasizes the fact that Congress and the Comelec must make sure that this trust must be (retained),” Monsod said.

Caution

The Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) cautioned the public against accepting hook, line and sinker Comelec’s claim of “success” and “celebration of democracy” until the poll body answers questions on “the lack of public disclosure of the source code, the disabling of the verifiability feature of the PCOS machines, and the fact that passwords were pre-fed into the machines.”

“Speed is not the sole indicator or yardstick for success,” CenPEG’s director for policy studies Bobby Tuazon said.

“Whatever results are generated will remain questionable,” Tuazon added.