Apart from its proponents, no one really thought the automated elections would work. Even those who believe that poll automation was necessary thought the process had been rushed. There was not enough time to deliver the equipment to all the voting precincts on 7,107 islands, to train election officials to operate them, to run thorough checks on all the systems involved, including mobile communications and backup power, and to educate the voters on the new system.
The biggest issue was beyond the power of technology to address: the lack of trust in the office that would implement the new system. History was not exactly on the side of the Commission on Elections: Hello, Garci. Many insisted on doing a manual count, sticking to the slow, inefficient, chaotic, but familiar system that had been in use since this nation became a democracy.
Less than a week before election day, when the news broke that the flashcards for the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines had been wrongly configured, it seemed to confirm everyone’s worst suspicions. The machines were programmed to favor certain candidates, there was not enough time to send out the correctly-configured flashcards, etcetera. We would either be robbed of our right to vote, or robbed, period. The skies would rain frogs and comets would change course to collide with the earth.
It’s not an electoral exercise without complaints, and these abounded on May 10. (The day we have totally peaceful elections is the day everyone is dead; even then they will still vote.) The lines at voting centers were too long, some voters were taking forever, some voters couldn’t find their names on the lists, others got tired of waiting and just went home. Some machines bogged down—Noynoy Aquino, then still a candidate, had been waiting hours to cast his vote. There were reports of vote-buying (since the buyers had no way of making sure the sellers really voted for their candidates, they simply paid them not to vote) and goons threatening voters.
But these were fairly isolated incidents, nothing like the full-blown opera that we’ve come to expect during elections. (The intensity 11 psychodrama being one reason we Pinoys are so addicted to the polls.)
It seemed to me that through poll automation we had achieved the impossible: Boring elections. While the votes were being cast, no one could complain that he/she was being cheated — only the counting machines knew whose ovals had been shaded most frequently.
My amazement grew when the polling ended and the counting began. No more reading out each ballot and drawing a mark next to every name called, then counting all the marks for the next two months. The PCOS machines printed out their tallies, the numbers were sent off, then voom! they appeared on the big board.
By the time we went to bed in the early hours of May 11 we knew who was leading in the count; by the next afternoon we had a pretty clear idea who the winners were (or which candidates were the ones to beat).
Then the inconceivable happened. Candidates started conceding defeat. This was the electoral equivalent of hell freezing over. No one loses in Philippine elections, they just cry that they were cheated. And yet we saw candidates accepting the statistical improbability of overtaking the winners, then going away quietly.
With the count proceeding in such an orderly fashion, we could turn to the glitzier battle of the TV networks for ratings domination. As if to make up for the comparatively uneventful election, the networks waged special effects warfare: one trumpeted its “virtual presence” coverage, the other its “hologram effect.” I kept waiting for Princess Leia to appear and say, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.” (Kids, only the first three Star Wars movies that came out — technically, episodes 4, 5, and 6 — matter. The last three to appear were dreck, full-length ads for action figures.) It was certainly entertaining, but did it help us make sense of the polls? The voting system was new, but the people’s choices were “same old, same old.”
On the fourth day “normalcy” was restored. The proceedings slowed down to their usual crawl. I am writing this ten days after the election, and the count has been stuck at 90-something percent for a week. There are charges of electoral fraud, investigations, dramatic congressional hearings. The PCOS machines, widely admired on the first two days of the count, are now being called unreliable. And the networks are still bickering over whose virtual technology is more real.
For two or three days I thought our democracy had finally arrived in the 21st century. I was over-optimistic. What we got was a glimpse at a future where technology makes clean, efficient elections possible.
Maybe next time?