On Election Automation 3

Credibility, transparency more important than speed in 2010 elections—NSA Gonzales

“CREDIBILITY and transparency of the entire election process are as important as, or even more important than, speed in the proclamation of election results in 2010.”

National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales yesterday made this assertion as he reacted to the Commission on Elections' claim that the results of the presidential elections will be known at the end of the voting day itself with the poll automation version that the body has chosen to adopt, the optical mark recognition (OMR) system.

“Speed alone will not make an election credible; transparency will. And speed should not be achieved at the expense of credibility, ” Gonzales said, explaining that OES is the automated election system that is “most transparent, least vulnerable to wholesale fraud and most fit to the present level of readiness of the country's electorate.”

Gonzales pointed out that most of the country's electorate at present have not touched a computer. He added: “Most voters would trust a system more where they can actually see the counting of ballots.”

OES combines manual voting and precinct counting with automated consolidation and transmission of votes from the polling centers to the national level while OMR operates through instantaneous and internal tally of votes.

Gonzales noted that the proponents of OES have explained that OMR is vulnerable to automated wholesale fraud because it involves software programs with key to code known only to the vendor and the Comelec and these software programs can be manipulated by a few computer specialists.

OES is proposed by a group of election automation experts led by former Comelec chair Christian Monsod. Gonzales, along with at least 38 bishops and the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines' socio-political arm, the National Secretariat for Social Action, has been backing the group's proposal.

In their letter to the Comelec, the bishops expressed their fear for the fact that in OMR, the electorate cannot manually recheck or validate the results of the election.

The Malacanang official emphasized that though OES will not be as speedy as OMR in coming up with the final tally, it will already cut the time of canvassing for votes for national positions from more than forty days to just 4-5 days, without compromising transparency of the process and the credibility of its results.

Gonzales also refuted the claim of the Comelec that the OES is against Republic Act 9369, the law on election automation.

“There is no provision in the law prohibiting the Comelec from adopting this combined election system,” he said.