Computerized Elections in the Philippines?
Dr. Manalastas (Doc Mana) has this lengthy and interesting discourse about Computerizing Philippine Elections with Free and Open Source Software and the Internet. I agree that healthy dialogue about this topic is very very important. I commend Doc Mana for giving it a serious amount of thought. The first paragraph aptly describes his main point that computerization is not just about electronic vote capture and counting, but must be the entire process!
A true computerization of Philippine elections will utilize computer and communications technology in all stages of the electoral process: during registration of voters, the actual casting of ballots, the subsequent canvassing of votes, and the final tabulation and reporting of election results. It can not be just the use of stand-alone automated counting machines, namely PCs with optical mark readers (OMRs) to count votes made on paper ballots, because then, the transmission of precinct results to municipal, provincial, and national tabulation centers becomes a major problem. Stand alone PCs is the technology of the 1980s, and would have been appropriate election technology at that time. Now, we live in the connected world of the twenty-first century, in which people make financial transactions over secure web connections. If secure web is good enough to be trusted for making financial transactions, then it is good enough to be trusted to properly count our votes during elections.
The idea of using Cybercafes, Computer Rental Shops, Schools with Computers and Places with WiFi Hotspots is interesting. It really pushes modernization beyond just counting machines. It changes the entire picture of an election into a more efficient one. However, the major problem with this idea is that these places do not cover the entire country. Not every populated bario and barangay in our country of 7,107 islands have Internet connectivity and computers. This is a serious problem.
However, all is not lost. the CICT’s new Roadmap contains a number of projects that attempt to promote pushing computers and Internet access even to far flung communities. There is hope! Of course, the next step is to improve usability of the system. Not everybody can easily use a computer. Also since there are only a few computers, a system must be made to make the voting process fast, secure and safe. However, all these other issues have numerous possible solutions that I do not feel like talking about at this moment. Maybe some other time.
I personally really like Doc Mana’s idea. With a system like this, elections and referendums - moving forward - will be much cheaper and faster to implement. We can even hold municipal and even barangay surveys to allow government officials to easily get in touch with their citizens - Citizen Pulse. This improves governance overall!
ps. Another idea would be promote the deployment of shared services Automated Teller Machines (ATM) into far flung communities and allow voting over the ATM. Then, we can also provide other government services (SSS, GSIS, City, complaints, banking) into this shared ATM. This idea has its own set of issues too. Of course, this is a topic for another blog.
