Technophobe

Admit it: even if you can’t go anywhere without your laptop and you can tweet and find everything you need on the Internet, when someone starts talking about algorithms, you know that you’re still low-tech.

Several moons ago, when the Commission on Elections was just starting to convince people to trust the precinct count optical scan machines, Comelec and Smartmatic techies explained during a media presentation how the type of algorithm and built-in safeguards would prevent manipulation of data stored in the PCOS flash cards.

I’m a technophobe; it took some time for me to use cell phones and switch to digital cameras. I resisted parting with typewriters until our newspaper’s management decided to just make all of them disappear from the entire editorial office one day. I knew I would be in no position to pass judgment on the reliability of the PCOS machines.

So I brought along to the Comelec briefing our newspaper’s chief techie. He told me that with the type of algorithm used, it would be too complicated and time-consuming to fiddle with the machines in enough polling centers to alter the results.

But you are never fully reassured about something you don’t understand. After the briefing, when people asked me what I thought of the PCOS machines, I would say I believed that Comelec Chairman Jose Melo had his heart in the right place and was trying to do a good job.

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I’m not the only low-tech Pinoy. I’m pretty sure the technophobes, together with people who, either by choice or force of circumstance, have remained low-tech, outnumber the techies in this country by a wide margin.

No one could really say for sure if the PCOS machines would deliver. It was easier to understand the threat of election failure through staged security scenarios, real until the final hours before E-day, according to the buzz at the camps, but thwarted by the vigilance of decent security officers.

Until the polling centers opened, Filipinos weren’t sure if the machines – or the Comelec and Smartmatic – could be trusted.

The uncertainty added to the determination of many to sweat it out, literally, to wait in line for hours outside polling centers, in the country’s hottest summer in a decade, to cast their ballots. I can’t remember the lines being that long during manual elections. Last May 10, people wanted to come face-to-face with the machine and find out if it would count their votes; they refused to be beaten by the new system.

Before election day was over, automation was being hailed as a success, and there was no turning back.

The main reason for that was Melo’s announcement of a clear trend – and a likely winner – in the presidential race, less than three hours after the end of voting. And the emerging winner was neither of the two candidates supposed to benefit from an “automated Garci” but the worst nightmare of the administration, Sen. Benigno Aquino III. His emerging vice president was also the worst possible for the Arroyo administration: the United Opposition’s Jejomar Binay.

To this day, we can’t rely on expert opinion, based on a purely technical basis, on whether the PCOS machines truly proved too fast and the algorithms too complicated for “Garci.” But because of the circumstantial evidence of Aquino’s win (plus Binay’s likely victory), which also reflected the results of all major pre-election surveys and the two exit polls, commendations for the success of automation haven’t been withdrawn.

The Comelec finished receiving nearly all election returns, based on data transmitted by the machines, many days ago. But those who crafted the poll modernization law forgot to put Congress on automation mode.

So now we’re back to the bad old days of manual canvassing, with tacky entertainment provided by the growing Coalition of the Losing in the ongoing inquiry at the House of Representatives.

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The emerging picture in that probe is that a lucrative racket emerged before the elections: persons posing as techies apparently offered their expert services to no-tech candidates, promising to manipulate election results in their favor. The amounts being whispered about as down payment are quite hefty; even without the balance being paid, the con men would have made a killing.

An election lawyer is right: the morons who allowed themselves to be conned, or who did not report offers to manipulate the vote, deserved to lose. What is often said of fools and their money?

Fortunately, the low-techs and no-techs dominate the 14th  Congress, and the leaders are in no mood to be confronted with allegations of automated poll fraud, which they wouldn’t understand anyway – or at least that was the image they were projecting as of yesterday.

The aging leaders of both chambers, who are presiding over the joint session for the canvassing for president and vice president, have admitted as much. Yesterday they warned that the start of canvassing would be delayed if Comelec representatives would use “techie-techie” talk in briefing Congress.

We can leave the “techie-techie” talk to Koala Boy, who should go to jail together with his handlers and flash card snatchers. The Comelec should not let this attempt to sabotage the elections pass without punishing the culprits.

The country has had enough bizarre distractions. Did automation work? Who really knows? But candidates who were in no position to cheat appear to have won. The new president and vice president must now be proclaimed.