MANILA - After the “Hello, Garci” scandal in 2005, the Philippine poll watchdog community vowed to be better prepared in exposing and opposing fraud in the presidential elections in 2010.  

Poll watchdog groups immediately mobilized to expand their memberships, held voters’ education, and intensified training of volunteers. They also joined forces to make sure they would cover all grounds.

But several camps in the poll watchdog community fear all these may be put to waste if poll automation of the 2010 elections would lead to new forms of cheating.

“The greater concern is internal rigging than external hacking,” former Commission on Elections (Comelec) chair Christian Monsod told abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak.

A member of One Voice, Monsod is opposed to full automation. He is in favor of an Open Election System where the votes will still be manually counted in the precincts. Only the canvassing at the municipal, city, and provincial levels will be automated.

“It will be very difficult. We will need computer engineers to discover [fraud]—and there may not be enough of them. The discovery may take time and be too late to prevent damage,” lawyer Carlos Medina of the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente) told abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak.

“All the expertise we have developed in the last two decades may be for naught if through the use of automation, the cheating may occur. You don’t have a National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) that can look into the machines. There’s no way for a watcher to say, 'Yes, this is the vote count. I agree with it.' The machine will just spit out the report,” added Vincent Lazatin of the Transparency and Accountability Network (TAN).

“The Commission on Elections has not assuaged the fears of the public. I don’t have any confidence as a citizen,” Lazatin added.

Parallel count unreliable?

Poll automation has split the poll watchdog community. The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), led by former Ambassador to the Vatican Henrietta de Villa, is all out for poll automation. 

The Namfrel has merged with the PPCRV. Namfrel is also headed by de Villa.  

“Let's give automation a chance. Automated cheating will not happen. There are safeguards against hacking and software rigging (internal cheating),” PPCRV lawyer Howard Calleja told abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak.  

He said there will also be an internationally-accredited foreign audit company that will check the paper trail.

Besides, Calleja said the PPCRV will conduct a parallel count.

As opposed to the traditional Namfrel Quick Count—where volunteers nationwide collected and reported  to the national headquarters the certificates of canvass from over 200,000 precincts—the PPCRV national headquarters will simultaneously receive the electronic reports of the official results of the certificates of canvass.

The PPCRV-Namfrel will still be entitled to a printed copy of the COC.

Asked about the possibility that the Comelec’s official tally and the PPCRV’s parallel count would be different, Calleja said, “Magkakagulo tayo. But that’s not going to happen.”

However, Monsod doesn’t trust the parallel count.

“A parallel count may not be meaningful since the source document, which is the precinct count, is already machine-generated. There is no independent source. If there has been rigging, the parallel count will just legitimize the cheating. There’s no way to validate except the ballot. And the box cannot be opened unless there is a protest, and this happens only way after elections,” he told abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak. 
 
Jail the cheats

Medina said they will not be sidetracked by the possibility of automated cheating.

“We can still go for the accountability of cheaters,” he said. Unlike in the 2007 elections, when they first participated in national elections, Medina vowed they will file cases against elections offenders in the 2010 elections.

“We have a lot of learning from the 2007 elections. It was our first time to participate. We learned how to document election offenses properly so we can have enough evidence to file cases against them,” he said.

Lente was organized to help prevent another “Hello, Garci.” The controversy highlighted where the poll watchdog community failed. They educated the voters and sent volunteers to watch precinct counting, but they failed to guard at against dagdag-bawas or the padding and shaving of votes at the wholesale level.

Recognizing that lawyers are better equipped to guard the canvassing, Lente coalesced with the PPCRV and sent its lawyers nationwide. Lente discovered cheating in various areas in the country and reported these to the media.  

The poll watchdog community recognized that both administration and the opposition employed dirty tricks during the 2007 mid-term senatorial elections, but they said it did not affect the results.

A PPCRV report on the 2007 senatorial elections also gave credit to the media. “The positive gains of the 2007 elections could be attributed to a large extent to media’s activist role of watchdog and participant in the electoral process,” it said.