Tedious

It seems we are doomed to the tediousness of our embarrassingly antiquated electoral process.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the contract signed by the Comelec with an upstart technology provider was null and void. The company contracted to supply hundreds of millions worth of ballot counting machines was actually incorporated after it had won the contract.

According to initial reports, the Comelec will seek the reconsideration of the Court. But such appeals rarely progress.

Given the limitations on time, it is best that the poll body prepare quickly for a manual process. We haven’t a day to lose. And it will be most comforting if we begin adjusting now to relieve unfounded fears and irresponsible rumors about the elections being postponed.

I suppose the responsibility for this fiasco rests squarely on the commissioners. They awarded a humungous contract without following their own rules. As a consequence, the elections forthcoming have created even more anxiety for our people.

The sheer prospect of conducting elections with hundreds of thousands of candidates using extremely antiquated methods is horrifying. The exercise calls up dreary images of brownouts in the polling places, disappearing ballot boxes, exhausting manual tallies and weeks of uncertainty as poll protests are being sorted out and certificates of canvass being transported though the crudest means.

It is telling enough that when news of the Supreme Court decision filtered out last Tuesday, the peso weakened.

It is bad enough that we don’t really like the candidates we have. It is worse that we have to elect them through the most Byzantine process known to humanity.

In some of the most backward countries, voters tick off names on a ballot, choose from the pictograms of political parties or write a few names. In our elections, we ask our voters – by no means the most literate in the world – to write down the names of each and every candidate they like from those running for the presidency to those running for councilor in the smallest municipalities.

Voters here will have to write down the names of about fifty people and then decide on the party list organization they prefer to support. The names will be manually tabulated on large pieces of paper mounted on walls. The tabulations will be added up manually once more and transferred to certificates of canvass. The certificates of canvass will be physically transported to the national capital by boat, by ship or by horse-drawn carriages.

It is the most complicated, most vulnerable process known to man.

As a general rule, computerization should not simply hasten the count, it will also reduce the margin of error. It will not only make things easier for the voter, it will also make it more difficult to cheat.

Cheating elections requires time. Lots of it. The manual counting process allows people of ill-will ample time to mess with the results.

Computerization will cut the time required to complete the process. Therefore it will reduce the margin for cheating and make the process more reliable – not to mention less exhausting for the thousands who are condemned to man the canvassing centers and polling areas.

Computerization of our elections was demanded by law years ago. But a Comelec composed of eternally squabbling commissioners took their sweet time implementing the dictate of law. Our Congress took its sweet time funding the modernization process.

This is yet another textbook case on why we always fail in this country.

Computerizing the process is a simple enough task. But our institutions do not seem competent enough to execute it.

In the light of the Supreme Court ruling, I suppose we have no choice but to return the prehistoric methods we use in conducting elections. Those responsible for supervising our electoral process should begin mobilizing the hundreds of thousands of people required to make a highly manual process work.

We can only cross our fingers and hope that this crucial exercise holds together despite all the stresses and all the exhausting procedures. There is absolutely no room for failure anymore. The survival of our democracy is at stake here.

This early, there are those busy agitating against the elections. They are undermining its credibility even before it is held. They are warning of blood in the streets in the aftermath of a democratic exercise.

That is not healthy. That is irresponsible.

All the parties, all the candidates, all the volunteers and all the people responsible for seeing this process through should begin preparing for a long and exhausting count. It will help if civil society gets involved in ensuring clean and honest elections – for our own sake.

Elections create their own dynamic tensions. They polarize opinion and cause intense partisanships. They create the unholy atmosphere for intrigue, rumors and conspiracy theories. In a word, they create the conditions for breakdown.

If the system itself breaks down, there will be nothing to hold the cruel emotions at bay, nothing to encourage general acceptance of the results. If the elections fail to provide legitimacy for those who must govern, nothing else will. And the nation will again be condemned to yet another episode of turbulence and extreme anxiety.

More important than who should win is how credible the process turns out to be. I hope all of us realize that.

Too bad, the institution that should have formed the strongest base for the proper conduct of electoral democracy has been eroded through the past few years. It has been eroded because flunkeys instead of statesmen were appointed to man the commission. It has been eroded because it did not receive the level of financial support and political trust it should have to stand above the fray and effective mediate a divisive exercise.

That is a misfortune we will have to live with.

But against the odds, we must all help to ensure the process works anyway. We have no choice buy to make it work.

In the face of weak institutions and flawed processes, the patriotic thing to do is to help them work in whatever way we can. It will be treason to aggravate their weaknesses and exploit the flaws for short-sighted partisan gain.