Mock elections prove 50% voters disenfranchisement

Some 30 to 50 percent of the voters will surely be disenfranchised, as proved by the mock elections conducted by the Commission on Elections at the UNTV in Quezon City Thursday April 29.

Center for People Empowerment in Governance said the mock elections confirmed CenPEG’s previous warnings that the May 10 election is bound to disenfranchise from 30 to 50 percent of the registered voters.

It pointed to Thursday’s end-to-end mock elections held to accommodate 1,000 voters casting their votes from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. that allowed only 503 voters to vote with three rejected ballots.

The number of actual votes cast within the 11-hour voting time corresponded with earlier estimates of CenPEG based on two separate days of mock elections — the Feb. 6 mock polls held in six sites and the March 25 JCOC mock polls held at the Senate.

“The results of all the mock polls should all the more compel the Comelec to extend the voting time from 11 hours to 16 or even 20 hours to accommodate 1,000 voters,” Bobby Tuazon, CenPEG director said.

“Otherwise, expect long queues of voters on election day. And if Comelec will not be able to solve possible power and transmission glitches,

expect lot of voters airing their grievances,” Tuazon added.

The report issued by a CenPEG research team which observed Thursday’s mock election also showed possible problems that Comelec should begin to address now to preempt a failure of election in many areas.

Part of the problem is the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI)’s lack of quality training as shown by poor election supervision and troubleshooting; the PCOS machine bogged down six times; some mock voters were able to vote twice without being detected; and at least 10 voters had their names missing in the registry and were unable to vote. As anticipated, senior citizens had a hard time filling out the ballots.

CenPEG noted that all the mock elections were held not under “ actual conditions.” Most of the mock elections were held in city locations and the first time ones — organized in Quezon City, Taguig, Baguio, Cebu and Davao, had only 50 voters.

The first mock elections also showed that the average voting time for the 50 voters — excluding powering up the machine until official closing time — ranged from 1 to 2 hours. Translated to actual voting time could last from 16-20 hours or even longer. With the May 10 election limited to 11 hours, this could mean at least 500 voters in every clustered precinct being unable to vote.

Recent reports of machine breakdowns and tainted voters’ lists in Hong Kong, Singapore, as well as in Mindanao show possible bottlenecks and glitches that Comelec’s election personnel may not be able to handle on election day.

The Automated Election System Watch (AES Watch), where CenPEG is a lead convener, had urged the Comelec to hold realistic end-to-end mock elections using 1,000 voters including transmission in a remote rural barangay.

The failure of Comelec to test the automated election system under real conditions had added more uncertainties to the May 10 elections. The lack of minimum safeguards in the system — including the required source code review, verifiability feature, digital signature–have cast public doubt on the credibility of the elections.

Tuazon expressed concern, however, that voting will not be extended given Comelec’s preference for speed and quick proclamation at the expense of voters’ rights as well as fair and transparent election.

“Either Comelec is mocking the elections or it is trivializing issues that have been raised not only by CenPEG but other citizens’ watchdogs,” Tuazon said.

Also, given the history of fraud-embedded elections in the country, Malacañang yesterday admitted that this year’s electoral exercises have no absolute immunity from cheating and other irregular practices despite the automation process.

Deputy presidential spokesman Charito Planas admitted that it is difficult for the government to assure the public of fraud-free elections, especially since there are fear-mongers around, who have made it their life’s work to create social anxiety.

Planas said the only way to exterminate the fraud virus from spreading in this year’s national and local elections is for the candidates to form their own panel of poll watchers to guard their votes from various elements of deceit.

“Cheating (is very much part of our election). In our politics, no one loses, only cheated. So it’s up to the candidates (to guard their votes)… There is no assurance of fraud-free elections because the evil thinkers are always (thinking) ahead,” Planas told reporters in a post-briefing interview.

Speaking from her experience as a five-time mayoralty candidate in Quezon City, Planas said cheating especially in a form of bribery is quite inevitable because such twisted practices are deeply-entrenched in the Filipino nature.

She gave weight to defense secretary Norberto Gonzales’ claim of cheating. “There really are some local registrars of Comelec who (accept bribes) every now and then… Once you’re proclaimed, you have to be prepared to file an electoral protest but if there’s no proclamation yet, you can always (manipulate the results).”

Malacañang stressed the urgency of tightening the security in areas identified by the Comelec as election hotspots given the recent reported incidents of political violence in Abra and Maguindanao.

In a statement, Saludo said ‘the recent attacks in Abra and Maguindanao, and the NPA’s (New People’s Army) continuing extortion of campaign fees again underscore the need for our security forces to redouble efforts to ensure fair, free, orderly and credible elections.’

“The police and the military in all areas, especially election hotspots, should work closely with the Comelec and local communities to respond to threats and protect potential targets. By joining hands with key institutions and our people, we shall beat back the enemies of our democracy,” Saludo added.

Planas also suggested that the 15th Congress should amend the Philippine Election Laws adopting the election practices of Germany where voting registration is being handled by the civil registry, among others, to reduce, if not totally eliminate, the chances of cheating in the country’s future polls especially when it comes to the existence of flying voters.

In a related development, more than 1 million ballots will be subjected to the random manual audit (RMA) once the voting, counting and canvassing end.

According to Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal, more than one million ballots are going to be audited manually and this will include 1,145 precincts from 229 districts. That’s merely 2 percent of 50 million ballots.

In a resolution, the Comelec en banc approved the raising of required clustered precincts from only one per legislative district to five.

To recall, critics have been telling the commission that the random manual audit provision in the Poll Automation Law is too small to represent the accurate evaluation of the automated election system.

Beside increasing the number of precincts to be subjected to random manual audit, the commission also noted that selection of the precincts to be audited will be done randomly.

Based on the 11-page Resolution 8837, the selection of the precincts will be done at 12 noon of May 10 at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City using a tambiolo with numbered balls that have corresponding precincts.

Selection will be open to the media, political parties and stakeholders with any guest having the possibility of being invited to draw the ball from the tambiolo.

Auditing will be done by all the three members of the RMA team that totals to about 3,435.

But teachers serving as members of the BEI will not be allowed to serve as RMAT.

A P2,000 honorarium will be given to RMAT to cover for their service, meal allowance and transportation expenses.

The RMA will be conducted at the clustered precincts and still in an open environment immediately after the voting period closes, the results will be transmitted and the Precinct Count Optical Scan machines already will have shut down.

Only the votes for president, vice-president, congressman, governor, and mayor will be counted in the RMA. Over-votes will not be counted, but this will not invalidate the entire ballot.

The RMA is set to serve as a step to verify the accuracy of the electronic count performed by the PCOS machines.

The poll body noted that the RMA cannot be used in determining the winners even as there are discrepancies.

“In no way shall the result of the RMA delay the proclamation of the winning candidates based on the results reached by the AES,” said the resolution.

Last Thursday, the Comelec en banc unanimously junked the petition for a parallel manual count citing that the poll body will already conduct a random manual audit.

On the other hand, the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente) yesterday backed the ruling of the Comelec to junk the proposal to conduct a parallel manual count.

In a press conference in Manila, Lente co-convenor Carlos Medina said they agreed with the ruling of the Comelec that disallowed the implementation of a parallel manual count since it is already too late in the day to introduce a new process.

Lente whose members are lawyers, students and paralegals were accredited by the Comelec as another citizens arm for the May 10 elections. –Marie Surbano, Manila Times