Comelec wary of using hybrid system for 2016 elections

The Commission on Elections is no longer keen on pursuing the proposal to use a hybrid voting system hold the 2016 elections after experiencing how cumbersome and costly the process was during mock polls it recently held in Cavite.

 

Comelec Commissioner Christian Robert Lim told lawmakers Thursday poll body has advised against adopting the Precinct Automated Tallying System (PATAS) proposed by former Comelec Commissioner Gus Lagman and other election watchdog groups because it was found to be prone to human error, and in need of a software that might take more than a year to develop.

 

In addition, he said the hybrid system appears to be costlier than both leasing new and refurbishing old optical mark reader (OMR) machines, and there is a need to amend the law or pass a new one to legalize its implementation.

 

"[In the report we made after the mock polls,] we advised not to use the PATAS system for 2016 elections," he said.

 

Under the PATAS, the voting and the counting of votes at the precinct level will be done manually before the results are encoded and transmitted electronically for the official canvassing of votes.

 

Lim said PATAS’ flaws came to light when it held two mock elections at the Bacoor National High School last month.

 

“During counting, it took 41 minutes to count 20 ballots for national positions only,” he said. “We can say that the accomplishment of the election returns and tally board is time consuming.”

 

Human error

 

With the length of time needed to count the ballots, Lim said it is likely that on the actual date of the national election, the person operating the laptop where votes are being tallied might commit errors when they succumb to fatigue and eye strain. 

 

Candidates, meanwhile, will need a minimum of four watchers to check the accuracy of, among other things: reading of ballots, and the tallying of votes in the election returns, tally board and laptop.

 

“There’s an absence of transparency in the tallying of votes since what is seen on the laptop screen is different from what is being projected by the LCD projector,” Lim noted.

 

He said extra vigilance will have to be taken by the candidates because the procedure in counting the votes under the hybrid system is as follows: the votes for the President, Vice-President, Senators are counted first, followed by the local candidates, then by the candidates for party-list representation. 

 

“This opens up opportunity to tamper with the ballots three times aside from prolonging the counting,” Lim said.

 

P36 billion to P39 billion

 

Since the hybrid system will make use of various equipment for the counting and canvassing of votes, Lim said its cost will be higher than two other options considered by the Comelec: the refurbishment or upgrade of the existing 81,896 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines and lease of 23,000 new OMRs, which cost P2.88 billion; and the lease of 23,000 OMRs, which carries a price tag of P2.5 billion.

 

Assuming that three persons will comprise the Board of Election Inspectors, Lim said the poll body will have to shell out P36.8 billion since aside from the P4,500 per diem it will give to the teachers, it will also have to purchase technical equipment such as a laptop, projector, projector screen and generator for each of the 36,000 voting centers envisioned under the PATAS. A four-member BEI, meanwhile, will cost P39.7 billion.

 

“The budget we requested from DBM (Department of Budget and Management) for the 2016 elections is only P20 billion,” Lim said.

 

Not in compliance with the law

 

Adding to questions about PATAS’ integrity is the absence of an election management system, as well as a canvassing and consolidation system that might take months to develop.

 

Lim said it is not advisable to use short messaging service (SMS) or text messaging in the transmission of results similar to what was used in the mock polls because the delivery of messages is not guaranteed, and the system is highly susceptible to spamming and can be attacked via Denial Of Service (DOS). Intercepting messages and calls are also possible by way of setting up fake GSM towers.

 

And with PATAS being neither an OMR- based nor Direct Recording Electronic system, Lim said Congress will have to change the existing election laws so that its implementation will have legal basis.

 

“PATAS, in general, does not comply with the minimum system capabilities provided by the automation nor law,” he said. 

 

More transparency

 

In the hybrid system’s defense, Maricor Akol of the poll watchdog group AES (Automated Election System) Watch said voting and counting will become more transparent under PATAS than it was during the 2010 and 2013 polls.

 

“The manual system is tedious, of course, but we’ll be able to have more transparency and we’ll know for sure what’s in the ERs (election returns),” she said, adding that the glitches encountered during the mock polls would’ve been minimized if there weren’t so many questions raised during the event.

 

“The manual system can never compare in speed with the PCOS machines, but the [voting through] PCOS was never transparent anyway,” Akol said.

 

While Comelec chairman Andres Bautista said the poll body continues to consult with its stakeholders regarding which system to use in the 2016 elections, Caloocan City Rep. Edgar Erice said resorting to PATAS will just be a “waste of time.”

 

“This PATAS system is amateurish, ill-prepared. They’ve (poll watchdog groups) have been talking for more than a year about this system and then papalpak lang. They just wasted our time,” he said. 

 

Bautista said the poll body will announce which system it will use for the upcoming national polls by July 31. — JDS, GMA News