An imperfect system

Ask most Filipinos and they will tell you that cheating is expected in the May elections.

So what is being done about it, with the elections less than a month away?

Not much to prevent the kind of fraud that can substantially alter election results.

Apart from exposing potential cheating schemes, the best that advocates of clean elections can do is to post as many volunteers as possible around the country to discourage fraud.

As we all know, this has not prevented cheating at the polls.

Our vintage voting system has always been vulnerable to direct forms of vote manipulation such as snatching, stuffing or switching of ballot boxes. Unless poll watchdogs stand guard over thousands of ballot boxes around the clock, there’s no way to completely ensure the integrity of those yellow boxes after the polling centers close on election day.

Apart from such crude but still effective forms of cheating, we must contend with flying voters and even voters who rise from the dead.

This is because in the 21st century, we still haven’t managed to clean up our list of voters. In some voting precinct in Manila my name and those of my relatives must still be registered, years after we moved out of the city.

Without a centralized voters’ list, it’s almost impossible to verify the accuracy of lists maintained by every city or municipality. Who has moved to another city? Who has died?

We went through the motions of a new registration in 2004, ostensibly to update the voters’ lists and get tamper-proof voter ID cards.

When election day rolled around, the Commission on Elections threw up its hands in surrender amid complaints of double registrations and many other glitches. The Comelec instructed polling personnel to simply go ahead and use the old lists if the new ones posed too many problems.

In May I will go to my voting precinct with a strip of bond paper that’s almost falling apart, with my name handwritten on it, looking for the place where I’m supposed to cast my vote. This is my precious voter’s ID. The tamper-proof computerized ID card never reached me. Was it sent by snail mail?

* * *

Some of the 500,000 or so Filipinos working overseas who have registered for absentee voting will be allowed to cast their votes by snail mail.

Opposition candidates and poll watchdog groups are leery of the absentee voting process, not only for Filipinos overseas but also for soldiers posted away from the areas where they are registered as voters.

At least one opposition candidate has contended that absentee voting in the Armed Forces of the Philippines was used to cheat in the 2004 elections.

There is no proof to bolster this allegation, but it will do no harm to watch out for this kind of fraud. But how do we keep track of soldiers’ absentee votes?

And how do we protect the votes of Filipinos overseas? That’s half a million votes – enough to make a difference in the outcome of the elections.

The best that has been done so far is to appeal for vigilance among Filipinos overseas, to guard the integrity of their votes.

* * *

The vote can be undermined even before election day, through vote-buying, harassment and outright murder. Election-related violence has never been eradicated.

Our laws on campaign spending have always been toothless. There is no way of monitoring or preventing vote-buying, overspending and massive campaign donations.

The only spending that the Comelec can monitor is the one for media advertising, because proof is easy to obtain. And even then, the rules can still be bent to favor certain candidates.

Cheating, as we all know, continues long after election day. The arduous, protracted manual count facilitates fraud.

Despite the watchful eyes of numerous organizations and the official poll watchers of major political parties, we’ve still had vote-shaving and padding or "dagdag-bawas" in previous elections and the vote-rigging scandal in 2004.

Is there anything new that has been done since then to prevent a repeat of that scandal?

People have become more watchful. But perpetrators of fraud have also seen the weaknesses of their schemes and are surely moving to avoid being caught.

* * *

>Several countries including the United States, Australia and Britain are fielding personnel around the Philippines to observe the conduct of the May elections. The personnel do not intend to pass judgment on whether the elections will be clean. They are not even formal election observers — the type sent during a presidential election — but individuals who want to see how Filipinos will conduct this latest electoral exercise.

The world will be watching. But we are used to having the world watch our every move, and we still haven’t stopped vote-buying, fraud and election-related violence.

Western expats point out that democracy is imperfect and elections even in their own countries can also be marred by controversy.

The important thing, I am often told, is to keep holding elections, identifying glitches along the way and addressing them, and improving the system, no matter how slow the process of change may be.

This is presuming that the glitches are being addressed and there are efforts to improve the system. But in the past decades, nothing has changed in the way we conduct our elections. Not even two people power revolts have led to reforms.

It will be no different in May.