No to electronic voting for Australians!

It’s out in the news in Australia. It also broke the news here that in Australia the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters released its interim report which said that there were too many risks associated with the proposal to shift from manual counting to automated or electronic voting for the coming federal elections. This means that in the next federal elections, the Aussies will have to do with their usual pencil and paper to cast their ballots.

The joint committee found out that machine electronic voting was vulnerable to hacking and measures to mitigate that risk would be costly. So shifting to electronic voting for federal elections was not feasible before the next election or in the near future without “catastrophically compromising electoral integrity.” The Aussies even studied the prospect of voting through the Internet, but questions rose regarding the privacy of voters and the security of the ballot.

There must be something that the Aussies found out about electronic voting for them to shy away from it. For sure, they must have learned the lessons from the Philippines, where the Commission on Elections (Comelec) insisted on using the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines where we have already written many examples of the failure of this electronic voting machine, which was first used in the 2010 presidential elections.

As far as the 2010 presidential elections are concerned, our best example is what happened in the town of Compostela, 25 kilometers north of Cebu City where Mayor Quiño supposedly won after the PCOS machines counted the votes. But former Mayor Gilbert Wagas filed a complaint, but with our snail’s paced justice, a month before the 2013 elections, Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Estella Alma Singco ordered the ballot boxes to be opened and it revealed that former Mayor Gilbert Wagas did not lose by 3,000 votes… he won by nearly 4,000 votes. This is our clearest proof that the PCOS machines are not accurate.

There are many more complaints vs. the PCOS machines in the 2013 polls. But the Comelec refuses to believe the truth despite the presence of concrete evidence against the PCOS machines. As the Australian Joint Committee chair Tony Smith pointed out, “Technological convenience must be balanced against electoral integrity.” Alas, for Filipinos, electoral integrity is unheard of inside the mind of Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes.

* * *

I wasn’t a bit surprised to learn from the news that the Supreme Court (SC) affirmed the two resolutions of the Comelec that unseated Laguna Governor Emilio Ramon “ER” Ejercito as Governor for spending P23 million in excess of the P4.5 million allowed under the Election rules, which amounts to P3 per registered voter in his province. This was the subject of the editorial cartoon of Philippine STAR last Thursday showing a huge bucket reserved for overspending candidates and only Gov. Ejercito shouting out “Just me?” being placed in that huge bucket. Indeed… this is the big unanswered question of the week.

I gathered from very reliable sources that the Comelec has a list of nearly a thousand politicians suspected of overspending in the 2013 mid-term elections, where around a hundred Congressmen are supposedly in that list. So if Gov. Ejercito got the boot by the Comelec, which the SC affirmed, what about the others who are equally or even more guilty than him in their overspending during the election campaign?

Again we ask… is the Comelec doing what we call “selective justice” in kicking out only Gov. Ejercito? Ask the man on the street if they believe that their Congressman, Governor or Mayor lavishly spent tons of money during the election campaign and that man on the street will validate that their local candidates spent more than they should… anyway they can recover that money through the Priority Development Assistance Program (PDAF) a.k.a. the pork barrel. Unfortunately for these elected officials, the SC a year ago, ruled that the PDAF or pork barrel is unconstitutional.

This brings us to the next issue, especially in Central Luzon where I got text message from my friends that jueteng has returned with a vengeance because they are protected by powerful politicians who will use jueteng to raise funds for the next elections. Of course this may be taken only as a rumor, but I’m one who believes in the saying, if there’s smoke, there must be fire!

With the Supreme Court affirming the ouster of Gov. Ejercito, we are also getting some kind of noise that the next to be removed from office is Mayor Joseph “Erap” Estrada because of the electoral complaint by former Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim. What can I say.... but we do live in interesting times. If and when this happens… I only see chaos in the future!

* * *

Email: [email protected] or [email protected]