Disenfranchisement seen with shrinking precincts

Massive disenfranchisement of voters, a chaotic voting process and the imminent failure of elections appear certain with the announced plan of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to reduce the number of precincts nationwide and squeeze some quarter of a million precincts into 80,000 precints. Currently, the precincts stand at 250,000 and will be reduced to 80,000 for the May 2010 polls to conform to the automated machines’ capability.

Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento yesterday told the media that the Comelec will be clustering the 250,000 precincts that were used in the 2007 polls to only 80,000 precincts next year.

“We will be clustering the precincts for the 2010 elections so we are likely to have about 80,000 precincts only,” he said, adding that it is part of the automation project.

Sarmiento said that the Comelec will be using 82,200 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines from Smartmatic, the poll automation winning bidder, for the 2010 national and local polls.

One machine will cover about 1,000 voters, he added. Congressional sources the Tribune talked with, for their comments on this electoral development, predicted not only a chaotic voting day leading to a failure of elections with such a move, but also a massive disenfranchisement of voters come May, 2010.

“What the Comelec is doing is making it easy for the machines, but not for the voters,” one said, explaining that because one PCOS machine covers 1,000 voters, the voters will be made to vote in just one precinct. We are talking here of 1,000 voters per precinct, many of whom will have a hard time finding their precints, and check out their status as voters of that clustered precinct. That will be a long, long queue of voters who may not even be able to vote,” he added.

Another pointed out that given the large number of voters in a clustered precinct, and given the fact that voters are to register, shade the circles of their choice of candidates, which names will be printed in very very small font size, along with the fact that the voters also have to indivually feed their ballots to the machine, “you can be sure of frayed tempers of the voters, and many won’t be able to vote at all.”

The Comelec is asking for big trouble, they told the Tribune. Apart from massive disenfranchisement, which always occurs during election years, this could also be used by some politicians to ensure their victory.

It was explained that politicians can bring in their voters early in the precinct and with his voters in first, they can deliberately delay their filling up of their ballots, which will have the consequence of ensuring that other voters who come in after them, don’t get their chance to vote.

But the Comelec commissioner appeared unfazed by the problem, saying that the Election Barangay Affairs Department (EBAD) is now clustering five precincts into one precinct to be able to reduce the number of precincts nationwide, with about 200 to 250 registered voters each.

Currently, the country has an estimated 42 million voters registered after the EBAD removed nearly six million voters as part of the cleansing of the voters’ list.

It was also claimed that there are some 1 million new voters who had registered already.

He said they expect the number of voterswho would register to increase further as the nation nears the deadline for the voters list up on Oct. 31, 2009.

Sarmiento also reported that there are already more than 104,000 new overseas absentee voters who had registered for the coming elections.

He said the bulk of the registrants are based in the United States, followed by countries in Europe, with China in third place and the Middle East in fourth.

The overseas absentee voters (OAV) registration will end on Aug. 31, 2009.

The poll body had declared as winner of the P11.3 billion contract for the controversy-tainted poll automation project to Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM).

Smartmatic will supply the 82,500 voting machines for next year’s first automated elections on a nationwide scale.

On the complaints being aired by the losing bidders, Sarmiento said he will bring up for discussion in their en banc meeting next week the declaration made by Comelec chairman Jose Melo blacklisting the bidders who continue to discredit the recently concluded P11.3 billion poll automation.

“I will ask our chairman in our next en banc this coming Tuesday on the issue on blacklisting. I will tell him that our friends from the media are asking about it,” Sarmiento said.

According to Sarmiento the blacklisting of the companies and suppliers on the future biddings of the Comelec has not been tackled even before, so this will have to be discussed in the en banc by the commission.

“We will discuss that in the en banc because we have not discussed this issue at all,” he said.

Chairman Melo last Thursday threatened to have the Comelec blacklist in future bids, the bidders who will continue to discredit the bidding process, which he claimed was very transparent and who will continue to try and destroy the reputation of the poll body as well as discredit the P11.3 billion automation project.

But Johnny Ramos, project director of the AMA Group, one of the seven bidders who had hoped to supply the automated machines for the coming May 2010 elections said they are set to send a manifesto to the Comelec which will contain the details of the “inconsistencies” of the bidding where the Netherlands-based Smartmatic and its partner TIM were declared winners by the Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC).

“The whole process is very transparent, open to the public…so I wonder what are the inconsistencies there,” Sarmiento echoed the same line used by Melo.

On the manifesto of the six losing bidders, Sarmiento said that although a manifesto is not a formal protest, it could still be considered a protest and the bidders could be held in violation of the waiver they had signed prior to the conduct of the bidding last month.

“A manifesto is not a formal protest, but it could be considered a protest….but we will see, we have to see first the manifesto to determine if it is a protest,” the Commissioner added.

Aside from the AMA Group, another bidder, Avante Inter-national Technology also sent letter to the poll chairman Melo complaining of unequal treatment.

The SBAC chairman meanwhile advised the losing bidders to accept their defeat graciously and learn their lessons from their failure to win the bid.

He added that he will soon be replying formally to the letters sent by the two losing bidders, Seqoia and Avante.

But the letter from Comelec , apparently will merely contain the statement that they should just accept the bid results and learn from it.

The losing bidders who were branded by Melo as “sour losers,” will apparently not have their allegations and complaints answered by the Comelec.

The poll body spokesman, James Jimenez also claimed that the allegations levelled by the losing bidders have no basis. –Marie A. Surbano and PNA