Democracy Watch Philippines (DWP) believes that adopting a hybrid vote counting system in 2022 is a step back for the Philippines in its journey towards transparent and credible elections.
A transparent and credible electoral process is at the heart of every democratic society. This is why, it is the policy of the State to ensure free, orderly, honest, peaceful, credible and informed elections. It is why the COMELEC adopted an automated election system in the first place.
For those of us who can recall the decades of manual vote counted elections, who does not recall how they were marred by controversy and allegations of cheating, coercion and violence, the . prePre-filled ballots placed in the hands of coerced, bribed or illiterate voters,. oOr how goons terrorized precincts on election day?. And when the manual counting began, it lasted for hours and in some instances even days, giving ample time for compromised election officials to destroy, misplace or simply “misread” ballots. Not to mention ”dagdag-bawas” or the wholesale altering of election returns, that simply became an accepted part of Philippine elections.
While the current Philippine election system is by no way perfect, the relatively peaceful and widely accepted results of the automated elections that saw President Aquino rise to power in 2010, and President Duterte in 2016, are testaments to how far Philippine elections have come because of automation.
And while we cannot deny that even the most recent 2019 election results faced its own share of criticism, the COMELEC admitted that the concerns stem from three areas that need improvement: the failure of some SD cards, the problems with some Voting Counting Machines (VCMs) and the transparency server outageglitch. But COMELEC also firmly believes that these issues did not in any way affect the overall election turnoutresults. The high trust ratings that the administration continues to enjoy is proof of the credibility of the elections and secured the legitimacy of our elected government officials..
Undoubtably, it was these issues from the last election that led to the proposed Senate Bill no. 7 calling for a Hybrid Election. Under the bill there will be three ways of counting election results done simultaneously. The manual counting of votes, simultaneously with filling in election returns and the digital enter of votes being counted in the digital spreadsheet that serves as the Digital Election Returns. However, when a discrepancy in the manual and digital count is encountered, the bill states that the manual count will prevail.
That said, Democracy Watch believes that more human intervention in the counting of election results make it more prone to tampering and fraud. This is why DWP believes that even this proposed hybrid system cannot escape the grave issues faced by the manual counting of ballots. The proposed hybrid system for all practical & operational purposes is still a manual system that will bring back the opportunities for fraud and wholesale cheating. Although results are transmitted, the old coercion and fraud tactics can again be mobilized to transmit tampered results. It represents a step backward for the Philippine Electoral system.
Further, DWP echoes the sentiment of 87 percent of Filipinos, who in a Pulse Asia survey conducted after the 2019 elections, said that they were satisfied with the automated polling system or the use of VCMs and expressed their trust for the results from automated elections (84 percent). And, like 91 percent of Filipinos, DWP is in favor of continuously using automated elections.
We call on the Senate to fully support the use of fully automated election for 2022, and instead use its oversight functions to ensure that the COMELEC address the issues faced by previous elections to ensure that the results of the 2022 elections shall be fast, accurate and reflective of the genuine will of the people.