Election items

This week has been challenging overall for the upcoming May elections. First, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) released an interesting and disconcerting report on voting trends in the Philippines. Then, the concerns around the automated elections continue to mount. Both areas are in dire need of address.

One of the points that we have been expounding for years is the need to shift our electorate from personality-based elections to evaluating candidates based on prior experience, accomplishments and platforms. With regards to platforms, the major issue is evaluating the programs and policies that the candidates will implement to achieve their platform. Without those, platforms are just talking points and foundationless clichés. The chairman of NSCB Dr. Romulo Virola just reported that (in an interview with another daily): ”…it is not yet in the consciousness of the greater public to vote on the basis of performance, platform or issues.” The basis for this evaluation was that in the 10 worst governed provinces in the Philippines, 8 of the governors who were up for reelection (or had relatives running) in 2007 won. In truth this is probably a two-fold issue: election fraud and uninformed voters. Of course, the solution to this issue is education.

There was one item that we applaud Virola for bringing up: the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG). As we have written, the Millennium Development Goals provide a framework and ‘hard’ goals for governments to achieve a reduction in poverty by 2015. The eight goals cover everything from education to sustainable development to food security. We advocated in the past and continue to advocate that our “presidentiables” should make the Millennium Development Goals a central issue in the upcoming election; especially since the Philippines was one of the signatories in 2000. At the very least, they provide a non-partisan way for the voting public to evaluate the programs and policies that the candidates say they will implement. We have to demand more from our candidates.

Automated elections continue to be a source of concern. At the very least, no matter what criteria are used to select a candidate, voters should know that the integrity of their vote is protected. What we are concerned with is that the new system that is being implemented may not have been sufficiently tested to ensure vote integrity. Internationally, new voting systems are usually rolled out with a test run, not in controlled conditions, but in actual elections with actual voters; usually in smaller local elections. This is the real litmus test of a voting system: How it performs in the real world, during a real election.

We are sure that, on the whole, the machines will work, what remains a concern is whether the programs to educate teachers (who will in turn educate voters on how to use the system) have been designed and implemented? Have the poll watchers and third party groups been adequately trained in how the machines work? Has the maintenance and support crews in each polling area been trained to diagnose and fix the machines in the case of a breakdown? We know that there is concern about ‘jamming’ the transmission of the polling data, but are there adequate security procedures to protect the ballots before they are fed into the machine? These are issues that appear to remain unresolved. Since the system and machine have not been tested in actual elections, more focus should be given to developing contingency plans and training the onsite staff to combat any issues that may arise.

Any election is an important election and this year is no different. The Philippines has five years left to reach the goals set out in the UN Millennium Development Goals; a burden that will fall on the next president and government. Integrity is the catchword: knowing that the integrity of votes is protected; knowing that the candidate who is elected is actually running on a platform and has the integrity to implement it for the betterment of the Philippines.