Paying the price

In a society where there is no culture of cheating one’s way to victory, votes are cast manually, and then counted in a quick and orderly manner. The system is simple, logical, credible and cheap.

In New Zealand, the results for both local and national contests can be known in a matter of hours, according to Ambassador Andrew Matheson. In France, the results of the presidential race can be gleaned unofficially at the closing of the polling centers; the official results are announced later in the night.

Other countries with manual voting systems (though several are already using e-voting in some form) include Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, South Africa and Sweden. They also get election results quickly – some not as quickly as the efficient Kiwis, but certainly faster than the Philippine vote count.

Voting even in the Netherlands, where Smartmatic is registered, is largely manual, though in certain aspects, machines are used.

Filipino taxpayers have wasted about P1.2 billion on 1,999 counting machines that are now rotting away in a temperature-controlled warehouse. We are now paying another P7.2 billion to speed up the 2010 vote count through automation.

This is another steep cost of inefficiency and corruption, and we’re not even sure yet if the system will work.

Chairman Jose Melo of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has repeatedly urged the public to “trust the machine” and give poll automation a chance.

So does the chargé d’affaires of Venezuela, Manuel Perez Iturbe. Venezuela is where Smartmatic, the foreign partner of local company Total Information Management (TIM) in the P7.2-billion poll automation project, has mainly done business in automated voting.

Using the Smartmatic system, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, known for his criticisms of the US government, received approval for his continued rule in a 2004 referendum. But he failed to secure public approval for a constitutional amendment in December 2007. The Venezuelan chargé in Manila is reassuring Filipinos that Smartmatic-TIM machines will work in May 2010.

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In the countries mentioned earlier, the manual system has worked, and this isn’t simply due to the size of the voting population. Voters in these countries don’t worry about ballot padding, switching or snatching. They don’t worry about vote-buying or manipulating the vote count at canvassing centers. Election-related violence is either unheard of or rare, unlike in our country where people are murdered by their political rivals months before certificates of candidacy are filed. For good measure, some political warlords even murder spouses and children who might take the place of their rivals in an electoral contest.

In New Zealand, which is consistently ranked among the most transparent and cleanest countries in the world, all votes are sent to a central canvassing area for the official count, with no one fearing that the people’s mandate would be undermined through fraud.

But let’s face it, how many countries are like New Zealand? Even the European Union is reportedly contemplating a union-wide system of automated voting to address growing voter populations, although considering the EU track record, I might be long gone before agreement is reached on this plan.

In other countries, voters must guard the sanctity of the ballot using all the resources available.

Two of the countries with the largest voting populations and land areas – Brazil and India – have embraced poll automation.

Brazilian Ambassador Alcides G.R. Prates and Indian Ambassador Rajeet Mitter say automation has done wonders for speeding up the count and boosting the integrity of the vote in their countries. Adnan Basaga, ambassador of Turkey where voting is fully automated, is also a believer.

Automation has to be helped along by measures that will prevent attempts to sabotage the system. Political parties must have sufficient poll watchers who understand the system, what to look out for, what might go wrong and how the system might be undermined. Poll personnel must be given similar training.

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Smartmatic-TIM will use 82,000 machines with optical scanners that are now being made in Taiwan under license by a Canadian company. Voting by millions of Filipinos working overseas will still be done manually.

The machines will have to pass several tests before election day. Even if automation has worked for large countries, each country has unique problems. Brazil and India, together with Russia and China, make up the so-called BRIC – emerging markets poised to become economic powerhouses. They are quick to implement reforms in the name of national interest – something that is still lacking in our country where there is strong resistance to anything that will alter the status quo.

Questions have been raised about the capability of Smartmatic to deliver as expected. The company’s mother firm, Smartmatic International Holdings, is based in the Netherlands, but the company in partnership with TIM is based in Barbados, which is notorious for hosting shell companies.

Those questions fuel talk about the need to prepare for a failure of elections in 2010 and the need to put together a transition team.

In other countries, voters cast their votes using pen and paper, the votes are counted, the results are announced and winners are proclaimed. It’s a simple process.

We are investing billions in a new system and putting our faith in it. We better make it work.