Comelec to evaluate recent polls

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will conduct “post-election evaluation” of the May 10 local and national polls and the Oct. 25 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan polls before the end of the year.

Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said they would gather all senior field officials in a meeting on Dec. 14 and 15 in Subic, Zambales to get their observations and recommendations about the two elections.

“We want to know what went wrong and what went right. We could improve on our weaknesses so that it won’t happen again in the future. At the same time we hope to (show) our good points,” he said in an interview.

While the country’s first national automated elections last May 10 have been generally considered a success, there were reports of glitches in some areas. There had been reports of tampering of compact flash cards that contained the names of voters and candidates.

The Comelec conducted the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections manually since there was no need to consolidate all the votes nationwide, unlike in the national polls that used the precinct count optical scan machines.

The Comelec has tapped Washington-based International Foundation for Electoral System to appraise the May 10 elections. Larrazabal claimed they want to evaluate the process based on the assessment of Comelec’s field officials.

“The last May10 election is not a perfect election. There are some things that we can definitely improve on and it’s good to get feedbacks from the field personnel because they are the ones on the ground. They are the ones who know what happened in the precincts and in the municipalities so their feedbacks are important to us,” Larrazabal said.

He maintained that the Comelec intends to use the officials’ assessments to improve the country’s future electoral processes.