How electronic transmission of results works
MANILA, Philippines - Last September, Comelec Director Jose Tolentino showed the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines how the electronic transmission of results should happen in the May 10, 2010 elections.
“Instead of the physical transfer (of the counted ballots), these (results) will be electronically transmitted to the next level,” he said.
These levels are: 1) precinct; 2) municipal or city; 3) provincial; and, 4) Congress.
After the results are canvassed at each level, these will be transmitted to the next level, he said. Transmission should take around 2 minutes.
“Our canvassing still maintains the same hierarchy or ladder--precinct to municipal, municipal to provincial, provincial to national board. The only difference is that we have the servers and the website for the public to immediately determine the results in all levels--from precinct to the national board,” he said.
The results will also be transmitted to the dominant majority party, the dominant minority party, the accredited citizens’ arm, and the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas.
A back-up server, or the Comelec's server, will be used for a website where the results can be viewed by the public.
However, Tolentino said it is still Congress who will declare the winner of the presidential and vice presidential elections even though the results are already published on the Comelec website.
“The public will be able to determine the results in, more or less, real time,” Tolentino said.
Printer-friendly version
Send to friend
Share your views
Electronic Transmission Manual in Character
Why was the procedure so designed as if you are physically transmitting printed documents? And why not? The national level will not move until it receives the provincial level; likewise, the provincial level will not move until it receives the municipal level! This is not the essence of computerization.
From the precinct level, why not transmit directly to the national and provincial levels as it does with the comelect back-up server and dominant/minority party servers? There should be no mix up because I suppose you have designed precinct, municipal and provincial coding system.
In automation, the rationale is to maintain a central database, in that , you are correct when the precinct level transmits directly to the comelec central back-up server. Having this, the results should flow back (not vice versa as shown) to the national, provincial and municipal “board of canvassers” for the proclamations at those levels. As it is, the national, provincial and municipal BOC’s will transmit to the central servers data which it already has. What for? I do not want to anticipate but “errors” or “honest mistakes” could be committed along the way. Imagine, results have already reached the central servers but the national, provincial and municipal BOC’s do not yet officially know what’s going on below them because they are waiting for the COC’s along the ladder.
The term “Board of Canvassers” is already a misnomer from the beginning. What is there to canvass when everything should be computer generated? They should have better called them National Election Board, Provincial Election Board, etc.
I can only guess that the procedure was not well considered by system designers and analysts. What they did was get the manual procedure, prepare the flow chart, write the algorithms, then the program code. After all this is the contract….computerize the manual procedure. Very disappointing.
SABIHIN LAHAT
Comelec, puro kayo pa impress may nalalaman pa kayong mapping at multi levels, baka isang level di nyo ma-achieve. Mali pa yata ang pagka-explain nyo. When you transmit data, its done only once to all canvassing servers (at all levels). Yung may levels ay a manner ng pag summarize ng data or reports (in ordinary language) - the votes will be summarized at precint level, municipal, etc. Pero ang data transmittal should be done once otherwise you expose yourself to so many risks if you keep on transmitting data.
Anyway, this mapping and levelling is just one aspect and the easiest part because these are just processes and protocol which are in control by comelec. The hardest part are the operating environment and user input. Operating environment - madaming factors dito, like communication, power supply, security, IT support, knowledge of operators, etc. Sa user or voter input naman importante yung level of literacy at avoidance of error in marking the ballots. Gano ka sensitive ang reading machine sa mga errors and corrections anong tolerance nito, baka kunting error lang ay invalidaated na ang boto.
Wag na kayong mag pa-impress comelec now is the time to ask for everyone's support.
Poll Automation
Ung mga magagaling dyan na mga Filipino Engineers, bakit hindi nyo na lang tulungan ang gobyerno para maisaayos itong 1st ever poll automation natin. Baka mayroon kayong mga ideas para sa ganito kalaking project.
Sa personal kong opinion, talagang magiging mahirap para sa COMELEC ang i-handle ang ganito kalaki, ka-technical at ka-sensitibo na proyekto lalo na at ito ang unang beses natin na susubukan ang ganitong sistema.
Sana naman ma-appreciate ng ibang tao dyan ang effort na binibigay ng COMELEC at huwag maging negatibo. Magtulungan na lang tayo mga kababayan.
Best thing that could ever happen to this country
While transmission of data can be intercepted (and copied), it cannot be hacked or altered along its electronic highway; thus sanctity of the ballot is totally protected.
By July 2010, the Philippines will have a new set of leaders truly elected by the people.
GOD bless COMELEC and the Filipino people.
Quite Intriguing
With the four levels of data transfer, anything can happen. I just hope that the everything will work out fine and the true results will come out. Baka pag me nanalo na, sabihin na naman nun iba na di sila natalo kundi nadaya. Goodluck Philippines.
addendum
Sampling should not be construed as trending because here we are talking only of seconds and minutes. There is nothing much you can do to manipulate the results once they are published online. May I emphasize printing which will show the IP/source address, date and time.
Sampling may be done later after results are transmitted. In case of big discrepancies, the precinct people may opt to resort to fully recount manually right then and there. We don't expect discrepancies in the final tally, do we?
Comelec website
The comelec website should now display the pro-forma tabulation of results, or better still, the final tabulation menu so it can be tested by the public. How sure can we access the comelec servers for the real time results during peak operating hours? Hope the servers will not be clogged.
You may announce a date and time for the test so all interested people can join in accessing the website at the same time. Please remember that the transmission of results to the public will be the final gage whether the automation was a success or not. Delays and discrepancies could spell doom to all your efforts. Unreliable results mean garbage results. Please do not forget also an option for printing so we can compare notes with our precinct site results.
We are still hoping for the best. How about a random manual count for each precinct say 100 ballots? After shuffling the ballots and picking 100 samples, the percentage results should not be far from the total percentage generated by the machines, plus/minus a certain tolerance.
MR TOLENTINO, IPAKITA MO SA BAYAN ANG ENGINEERING ANALYSIS
Block diagram lang yan, gumagamit ka ng wireless kaya kailangan mo ng signal mapping sa buong kapuluan at mga calculations para masiguro mong walang epekto ang interference sa transmission ng election result.
WALA KANG SINASABI TUNGKOL SA POWER FAILURE, KUNG MAGKAROON NG BLACKOUT DAHIL KAGAGAWAN NG MGA ARMED PRIVATE ARMIES. SABI NI GIBO HINDI DAW NIYA NAGAWANG DISARMAHAN ANG MGA IYAN. ANO NGAYON ANG GAGAWIN MO?