Credibility, transparency more important than speed in 2010 elections—NSA Gonzales

15 February 2009

“CREDIBILITY and transparency of the entire election process are as important as, or even more important than, speed in the proclamation of election results in 2010.”

National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales yesterday made this assertion as he reacted to the Commission on Elections’ claim that the results of the presidential elections will be known at the end of the voting day itself with the poll automation version that the body has chosen to adopt, the optical mark recognition (OMR) system.

“Speed alone will not make an election credible; transparency will. And speed should not be achieved at the expense of credibility, ” Gonzales said, explaining that OES is the automated election system that is “most transparent, least vulnerable to wholesale fraud and most fit to the present level of readiness of the country’s electorate.”

Gonzales pointed out that most of the country’s electorate at present have not touched a computer. He added: “Most voters would trust a system more where they can actually see the counting of ballots.”

OES combines manual voting and precinct counting with automated consolidation and transmission of votes from the polling centers to the national level while OMR operates through instantaneous and internal tally of votes.

Gonzales noted that the proponents of OES have explained that OMR is vulnerable to automated wholesale fraud because it involves software programs with key to code known only to the vendor and the Comelec and these software programs can be manipulated by a few computer specialists.

OES is proposed by a group of election automation experts led by former Comelec chair Christian Monsod. Gonzales, along with at least 38 bishops and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’ socio-political arm, the National Secretariat for Social Action, has been backing the group’s proposal.

In their letter to the Comelec, the bishops expressed their fear for the fact that in OMR, the electorate cannot manually recheck or validate the results of the election.

The Malacanang official emphasized that though OES will not be as speedy as OMR in coming up with the final tally, it will already cut the time of canvassing for votes for national positions from more than forty days to just 4-5 days, without compromising transparency of the process and the credibility of its results.

Gonzales also refuted the claim of the Comelec that the OES is against Republic Act 9369, the law on election automation.

“There is no provision in the law prohibiting the Comelec from adopting this combined election system,” he said.
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NSA Gonzales refutes Comelec on poll automation

11 February 2009

NATIONAL Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales yesterday refuted the claim of the Commission on Elections that the open election system, which a former chair of the poll body is proposing, is against Republic Act 9369, the law on election automation.

Gonzales clarified that OES is not a return to the manual election system as it combines manual voting and precinct counting with automated consolidation and transmission of votes from the polling centers to the national level.

“There is no provision in the law prohibiting the Comelec from adopting this combined election system,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales and at least 38 bishops have endorsed the OES whose main proponent is a group of computer and election experts led by former Comelec chair Christian Monsod.

“The OES is not a step backward in poll automation. It is certainly a step forward; perhaps behind the expectation of some people but to the extent that is fit with the readiness of our electorate most of whom have not touched a computer. The system the Comelec has chosen is simply ill-matched to our electorate,” Gonzales stressed.

The Malacanang official also contradicted the assertion of Comelec chair Jose Melo that OES is a formula for “automated dagdag-bawas.”

“It is precisely dagdag-bawas or wholesale fraud that we want to eliminate or reduce in pushing for OES,” Gonzales said.

Monsod’s group points out that OMR is the one vulnerable to automated wholesale fraud because it involves software programs with key to code known only to the vendor and the Comelec and these software programs can be manipulated by a few computer specialists, Gonzales explained.

The national security adviser said the OES will address wholesale fraud by automating the stages of our election process where dagdag-bawas occurs. “Dagdag-bawas occurs at the canvassing for presidential, vice-presidential and senatorial results.”

Gonzales added that automating these stages will speed up very significantly the election process as it would cut the time for canvassing from more than forty days to only 4-5 days.

Gonzales maintained that OES is the election system that is most transparent, most credible and most appropriate for Filipinos, reminding that most voters would trust a system more where they can actually see the counting of ballots.

He said the experience in pilot-testing OMR in the last Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) elections showed the disadvantages of the system favored by the election body.

“I can’t understand why we would spend P14B on a system that is not transparent and not fraud-free when there is a better option that would cost us much less at P4B,” Gonzales said. –(30)

NSA Gonzales, bishops push for transparent poll automation

08 February 2009

National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales has pushed for an “open election system” for the 2010 polls, joining at least 38 members of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines who have asked the Commission on Elections to reconsider its decision to adopt a method of poll automation that is not only more costly but more vulnerable to fraud as well.

Saying the credibility of the forthcoming presidential polls is a national security concern, Gonzales said the OES will “ensure a transparent and fraud-free automated election system in 2010.”

“I urge the Commission on Elections to reconsider its decision to adopt the much more expensive but not transparent Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) system,” Gonzales said.

The CBCP’s social arm, the National Secretariat for Social Action (Nassa), also appealed to poll chairman Jose Melo not to use the OMR technology that “may elicit more questions than (the Comelec is) capable of answering.”

In their two-page letter to Melo, the bishops also underscored the “grave duty of the Commission to utilize appropriate methods and technology to safeguard the sanctity of the ballot.”

“We realize that the Commission sincerely wants to reform its tarnished image and it hopes to do so through the introduction of the optical mark reader and direct recording electronic systems. We regret, however, that these two technologies seem to be very costly in terms of procurement and storage and do not exactly guarantee a fraud-free elections results,” the bishops said.

“We fear, among others, the fact that OMR and DRE both operate through instantaneous and internal tally of votes, which the electorate cannot manually recheck or validate,” the CBCP members added.

Among the signatories are Archbishops Antonio Ledesma of Cagayan de Oro; Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato; Paciano Aniceto of San Fernando (Pampanga); Ramon Arguelles of Lipa (Batangas); Romulo Valles of Zamboanga; and Bishop Broderick Pabillio of Manila.

Gonzales echoed the concerns raised by the bishops, saying the OMR has disadvantages that “can endanger the credibility of the 2010 election and can consequently spark a political crisis.”

“Poll automation experts have already raised their concerns about the vulnerability of the OMR to wholesale fraud, which can be done just by a few computer technicians, with or without the connivance of the Comelec or of vendors of the machines,” the national security adviser said.

The Church leaders also pointed out that in contrast to the OMR, the OES “espouses transparency from voting to the tallying of votes and makes all election data readily available to all groups for their own monitoring purposes.”

“We believe that the OES reflects our aspirations for a fraud-free 2010 elections…The fact that the voting and precinct counting are transparent to the voting public makes wholesale cheating extremely difficult to execute,” the bishops said, adding that it is also the least costly among automated election technologies available to the country.

OES combines manual voting and precinct counting with automated canvassing from the voting center to the national level.
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COMELEC automated poll version vulnerable to wholesale fraud

01 February 2009

STRESSING that the credibility of the 2010 elections is crucial to the much needed renewal of Philippine democracy, the Ateneo-based Center for Strategic Studies yesterday warned that this credibility can be endangered by the “disadvantages” of the optical mark recognition system (OMR), the poll automation system favored by the Commission on Elections,.

Jesuit priest Fr. Romeo Intengan, president of CSS, raised his concern about studies showing that the OMR is not transparent and susceptible to wholesale fraud even as he lauded the present Comelec leadership for exerting extra efforts to ensure the computerization of the 2010 elections.
“Poll computerization experts warn that with the OMR, the danger of fraud may be embedded in the system itself, with or without the knowledge or connivance of the vendor or of the Comelec. A few computer technicians can subvert our whole election system,” Intengan noted.

He pointed out that the disadvantages of the OMR were already observed in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) election in August last year where the system was pilot-tested, along with the direct recording electronic (DRE) system.

The DRE has been dropped by the Comelec, a move welcome by Intengan who said the system is “very cost prohibitive, not transparent and a logistics nightmare.”

The disadvantages of the OMR can threaten not only the credibility of the 2010 elections but also the renewal of our democracy, Intengan said.

Intengan’s warning came on the heels of President Macapagal-Arroyo’s marching orders to her political parties to merge and gear up for the 2010 elections. He said his concerns are prompted by a presentation by some computer automation experts led by former Comelec chair Christian Monsod.

The priest is urging the poll body to consider another option for poll computerization, the open election system (OES), which the group of Monsod is pushing. Intengan noted that among present poll automation technologies, the OES is the “most transparent and least dependent on the honesty of implementers.”

He added that the OES is also most practical. It will only cost around P2 billion, just about a fifth of the P9.9 billion budget that the Comelec has asked for the poll computerization project.

Intengan conceded that OMR is more high-tech and faster in counting than the OES, but he emphasized that transparency is as important in election as speed in counting.

In an OES, votes will be cast and tallied as in manual voting, thus preserving the secrecy of the ballot and the transparency of the precinct-level tallying, but the canvassing of precint tallies from the voting center (school) to the national level will be automated.

In both OMR and DRE, the electoral process is automated from voting to canvassing with their difference being that the OMR has a paper trail whereas the DRE has none.

In OMR, voters choose their candidates by shading with pencil the corresponding ovals on pre-printed ballots. The OMRs at the voting centers (schools) will read these ballots and at the same time count the votes.

Intengan noted experts’ observations that votes shaded in the OMR ballot are easily exposed to tampering and official OMR ballots are vulnerable to advance shading which can be done by a single person. Such tampering of ballots would be very difficult to trace or determine, he added.

OMR is also very vulnerable to large scale sabotage, Intengan added. “Anyone with an ill desire to stop voting or counting can simply cut the supply of electricity, the occurrence of which is not uncommon in the country during elections.”

Intengan agrees with Monsod’s group that what needs to be sped up by automation is the canvassing from the voting centers level to the national because it is at these stages that the local election process is taking so much time. Precint-level counting is normally finished within the voting day, he noted.

“The ARMM experience should not be repeated. Particularly not in a very important national election that gives us the chance to put in power new leaders who can effect much needed reforms in the country, “ Intengan emphasized.

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