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Automating Philippine Elections

Automating Philippine Elections. How is cheating done?. Vote-buying (carbon paper, ballot marking, “ Lanzadera ” ) Ballot box snatching Ballot box stuffing “ Flying voters ”. Retail cheating. To vote once & only once …. Wholesale Cheating. Votes counted as. Recorded in words as.

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Automating Philippine Elections

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  1. Automating Philippine Elections

  2. How is cheating done?

  3. Vote-buying (carbon paper, ballot marking, “Lanzadera”) • Ballot box snatching • Ballot box stuffing • “Flying voters” Retail cheating

  4. To vote once & only once…

  5. Wholesale Cheating

  6. Votes counted as Recorded in words as Marikina 1998 Manila Dist-4 2001 Manipulation of precinct counts

  7. Municipal Certificate of Canvass Provincial Certificate of Canvass Zamboanga del Norte, 2001 Manipulation of provincial results

  8. Official Official municipal provincial Illegal canvass canvass votes Alaminos 2599 12599 10,000 Dagupan 13784 28784 15,000 Illegal votes from 22 other towns in Pangasinan for a senatorial candidate in the 1995 elections equaled 112,994. Manipulation in the official municipal & provincial canvass

  9. Anatomy of DAGDAG-BAWAS

  10. Province 5

  11. Province 5

  12. Province 5

  13. Dagdag-Bawas Summary

  14. And so to minimize, if not eliminate cheating, and to speed up the election process, an automation law was enacted in 1997 (R.A. 8436), then amended in 2007 by R.A. 9369

  15. R.A. 9369 • AN ACT AMENDING REPUBLIC ACT NO. 8436, ENTITLED “AN ACT AUTHORIZING THE COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS TO USE AN AUTOMATED ELECTION SYSTEM IN THE MAY 11, 1998 NATIONAL OR LOCAL ELECTIONS AND IN SUBSEQUENT NATIONAL AND LOCAL ELECTORAL EXERCISES, TO ENCOURAGETRANSPARENCY, CREDIBILITY, FAIRNESS AND ACCURACY OF ELECTIONS, AMENDING FOR THE PURPOSE BATAS PAMBANSA BLG. 881, AS AMENDED, REPUBLIC ACT NO. 7166 AND OTHER RELATED ELECTIONS LAWS, PROVIDING FUNDS THEREFOR AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES"

  16. “The State recognizes the mandate and authority of the COMMISSION (COMELEC) to prescribe adoption and use of the MOST SUITABLE TECHNOLOGY of demonstrated capability taking into account the situation prevailing in the area and the funds available for the purpose.” R.A. 9369 Section 1

  17. R.A. 9369 Section 9.1 • Recommend the most appropriate, secure, applicable and COST-EFFECTIVE technology to be applied in the AES, in whole or in part, at that specific form in time.

  18. The Manual Election System Ballots tallied by BEI in each precinct and ERs prepared BEIs bring ERs to CMBOCs CMBOCs canvass ERs and prepare SOVs and COCs; bring them to PBOCs PBOCs canvass COCs and prepare provincial COCs and SOVs; bring them to NBOC NBOC (Comelec) canvasses COCs; Congress canvasses Pres/VP COCs

  19. Manual Tallying/Canvassing Time Line 5-12 hrs 10 days 20 30 40 CITY / MUNICIPAL, PROVINCIAL AND NATIONAL CANVASSING (25 – 40 DAYS) PRECINCT TALLYING Given the above time line, it becomes obvious, which phase of the election process should be automated.

  20. Features of the “most suitable” automated system for Phil. elections All steps transparentto the voting public Manual voting and precinct tallying Two “trusted” documents – the ballot and the ER ER data and canvassing results available to the public All data quickly verifiable all the way to original source documents (the “trusted” documents) Can be completed anywhere from 2-5 days (automates canvassing) Software used is open andavailable to the public (any one can do his own tabulation) All official Comelec sites/databases secure Minimum or no training required for >40M voters Cost-effective Minimum or no storage concerns after each election process Not dependent on the trustworthiness of the implementors

  21. IF we can design an election system that has those features, then we can greatly minimize, if not completely eliminate, cheating.

  22. Option 2: Open Election System PC Encoding Votes cast & tallied as in manual voting ERs brought to school encoding (PC) center ERs validated then posted on the web w/ BEIs digital signature CMBOC will access database, produce SOV, COC All interested parties may access and process the data by themselves All interested parties can send SMS to watchers to verify figures PBOCs access DB; produce Prov SOVs and COCs NBOC accesses DB for final results CITY/MUNICIPAL BOARD OF CANVASSERS PROVINCIAL BOARD OF CANVASSERS NATIONAL BOARD OF CANVASSERS DOMINANT PARTY DOMINANT OPPOSITION CITIZENS ARM MEDIA & OTHERS VOTING CENTER DOMINANT PARTY DOMINANT OPPOSITION CITIZENS ARM MEDIA & OTHERS ENCODING CENTER PRECINCTS

  23. Open Election System • Most transparent - voters and watchers observe tally at precinct level • No need for voter training on use of machine • Once ER is encoded, the data, and then, canvassing results become accessible to the public • Cost affordable at about P4B (Comelec only buys PCs/servers, comm. reqmts, mgnt of process) • PCs/servers can be passed on to DepEd after each election • No storage concerns, because machines can be passed on to DepEd

  24. There are only 3 Issues that they throw at OES • R.A. 9369 says voting and counting must be automated • “... the Commission, is hereby authorized to use an automated election system ... whether paper-based or a direct recording electronic election system as it may deem appropriate and practical for the process of voting, counting of votes and canvassing/consolidation and transmittal of results of electoral exercises ...” • If we wanted to be literal about it, OMR voting is also manual, not automated. • Sections 31-42 talks only of manual processes.

  25. “... the mandate and authority of the Commission to prescribe adoption and use of the most suitable technology of demonstrated capability ...” “Automated election system, ... - a system using appropriate technology which has been demonstrated in the voting, counting, consolidating, canvassing, and transmission of election result, and other electoral process.” • Manual voting and counting is what we’ve been using in all past elections; encoding and electronic transmission have been employed by Namfrel in past elections. • And after all, R.A.9369 allows manual elections. • No need to demonstrate use of PCs (only needed w/ OMRs and DREs because they are special devices).

  26. Too much human intervention; the 80,000 encoders are 80,000 opportunities for cheating • What’s wrong with human intervention? That’s exercise of participatory democracy. • More difficult to cheat – one has to buy off a lot of people (doesn’t wholesale cheating happen at canvassing where there are fewer people?) • Easier to buy off a small group of people who hold the key to the software.

  27. Voters mark pre-printed ballots Ballot boxes brought to school tab (OMR) center. Ballots fed into OMR then ERs printed; signed by BEI ERs posted on the web CMBOC will access database, produce SOV, COC All interested parties may access and process the data by themselves All interested parties can send SMS to watchers to verify figures PBOCs access DB; produce Prov SOVs and COCs NBOC accesses DB for final results Open Election System- OMR CITY/MUNICIPAL BOARD OF CANVASSERS PROVINCIAL BOARD OF CANVASSERS NATIONAL BOARD OF CANVASSERS DOMINANT PARTY DOMINANT OPPOSITION CITIZENS ARM MEDIA & OTHERS VOTING CENTER OMR DOMINANT PARTY DOMINANT OPPOSITION CITIZENS ARM MEDIA & OTHERS PRECINCTS

  28. Optical Mark Recognition • Ballots are pre-printed so voters simply mark choices • Faster, because tally of votes automated • Less work for BEI at precinct level

  29. Concerns about Comelec’s OMR-based automation plans • Reliability of the machines/system • Software is proprietary/counting not transparent • Readiness of the Comelec to manage full automation

  30. But … the newspapers reported that the automation of the last ARMM election was successful. Was it?

  31. Problems with DRE • Problems in the initialization of voting machines since some of the BEIs committed repeated errors in punching their pin codes. Designated IT experts had to take over the initialization process to speed up the process because this has caused delay in voting. • Operational delays in starting the machine due to defective DREs which were however immediately replaced. • Incidents of automatic machine shut down while the voters were casting their votes. It was resolved by replacing the electronic voting machines (EVMs). • Many BEIs were unfamiliar with the EVM due to the overnight substitution of BEIs with untrained persons which could have been perpetrated by interested parties.

  32. Problems with DRE (cont.) • Many voters and BEIs were unfamiliar with the system since there was hardly any opportunity to see and test the DRE before the elections, this could be attributable to lack of voter education due to time constraints. • There were several instances where illiterate voters and those who were not familiar with the new system were being accompanied by another person inside the precincts as coach. The relationship between the voter and his/her companion was not properly validated. These so called coaches do not only guide the voters inside the voting precincts but even control the hand of the voter as to who to vote. Even some of the BEIs and watchers have been seen coaching the voters as well. • On the secrecy of voting, there were no booths to cover the DRE machines enabling the voters of another adjacent DRE machine to see the votes being cast. • Size of the candidates’ pictures (too small) made the image unclear.

  33. Problems with OMR • Votes shaded in the OMR ballot were exposed to tampering. Reports of unscrupulous erasures were documented. • The distribution of the official OMR Ballots were likewise exposed to the threat of advance shading. • The voters would sometimes accidentally scratch or ink-blot the OMR ballots which hampered its optical scanning. • The folding and unfolding of OMR ballots resulted to some extent in time inefficiency at the counting centers. • In a number of the PPCRV’s poll watchers reports, some BEIs, accidentally perhaps, tore off the bar code of the ballots resulting in their rejection. • The BEIs had the lack of procedural knowledge on the disposition of invalid ballots.

  34. Problems with OMR (cont.) • Valid ballots that were crumpled, folded (to fit in the size of the ballot box) and those that contained unnecessary markings or smudges as well as those lightly shaded ballots were rejected, which slowed down the counting. • The number of ballots to be counted per ACM was not as it was projected. There are discrepancies in the counting of ballots between those who actually voted with results counted. An example of this was experienced in one of the precincts of Shariff Kabunsuan where the actual number of voters is 371 but the machine counted only 276, there was a discrepancy of 95 ballots papers. But, after the BEIs conducted a recount the machine counted 365. • Incidents of over voting in some precincts that used OMR, such as Bumbaran, Lanao del Sur, were also encountered because of BEIs voting in their assigned precincts. In these cases the result was invalidated (treated as zero) and COMELEC had to override it.

  35. Problems with OMR (cont.) • The Counting and Canvassing System (CCS) was not programmed to accommodate failure of elections in some municipalities, such as Balindong, Lanao del Sur and Basilan, thus the machine had to be shut down to force the system to close the counting. There were incidents wherein the system would not close the counting and canvassing since it showed that it didn’t count 100% of the total votes from all the precincts though all precincts were able to count the votes. • Some ACMs to include laptops and printers overheated, stopped functioning and had to be re-started. • Constant paper jamming (of the OMR Ballots). • The attached full 196-key Keyboard in the ACM is open to programming intrusion.

  36. Concerns about Comelec’s automation plans • Reliability of the machines/system • Software is proprietary/counting not transparent • Readiness of the Comelec to manage full automation

  37. It’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes. Joseph Stalin

  38. And who will count the votes come May, 2010? • The software that will run the OMR machines

  39. And who will write that software? • The foreign company that will supply the OMR machines.

  40. Sad to say, unless the Comelec insists on the use of Open Source, instead of proprietary software, we may be leaving the outcome of our elections in the hands of a foreign company. And the implementors, meaning the Comelec. • And not in the hands of the voters, as it should be!

  41. But before designing technology for elections, we must first determine how it will empower citizen controls, enabling the counting of votes in public rather than counting them in secret. We do not consent to any form of secret vote counting, administered and controlled by government insiders and their vendors. Black Box Voting

  42. Concerns about Comelec’s automation plans • Reliability of the machines/system • Software is proprietary/counting not transparent • Readiness of the Comelec to manage full automation

  43. Post-election Report of the Advisory Council on the Use of Automated Election System (AES) in the 2008 ARMM Elections October, 2008 IT Organization in COMELEC • The existing IT infrastructure in COMELEC is inadequate to meet the complexities of an automated election process which includes end-user tabulation and computing, multimedia networks, internet and database build-up and maintenance. There are inherent weaknesses in their current IT institutional set-up such that it does not reflect the importance of information technology. There is a pressing need for more and better training in the use and management of IT. There is a lack of IT “champions” within the organization who can promote the effective deployment and use of computerized systems.

  44. The consequent gains from the use of the OMR (Optical Mark Reader) and DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) technologies were diminished by the inability to use them side-by-side with effective change management*. There is a need to make all election stakeholders the subject and not the object of technology. Also, there is a need to prepare everyone for change (both psychologically and technically) before change can truly transform everyone’s mindset.*

  45. No time-and-motion study on how fast or how slow it will take a voter to fill up a ballot • If OMR rejects a ballot, no replacement ballot will be given to the voter.

  46. Calendar of Activities

  47. And the budget is yet another story ... • First they asked for P21 billion (DRE) • Then they reduced this to P13.9 (DRE/OMR) • Finally they settled for P11.3 billion (OMR)

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