By MARIA FEONA IMPERIAL
IT is no joke to start over.
Less than two months before the May 9 polls, the Commission on Elections has resorted to voicing a plea to the high court to rethink its demand of issuing vote receipts.
Otherwise, there may be failure of elections, the Comelec said Friday.
“There is a strong likelihood that the May 9 elections will fail if the voting receipt feature is enabled by the Comelec at this very late stage,” the poll body said in a 13-page motion for reconsideration.
While the law is supreme, logistics, cost of operations and timing need to be considered as well, it argued.
Additional costs, risks
The MR lists in detail the added risks and expenditures that come with the printing of receipts. This includes, among others, redoing the final trusted build of vote-counting machines (VCMs), which is already deposited at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
This is the second time that the trusted build will be discarded. In February, incompatibilities detected between the Election Management System (EMS) and the Canvassing and Consolidation System (CCS) have forced the Comelec to redo it. (See Printing of ballots delayed for the 4th time)
In the current trusted build, only the on-screen verification, which was earlier set to be activated for 15 seconds per voter, is allowed. (See On-screen machine feature to be enabled in elections)
Because the standard operating procedures in polling places need to be refined, the Comelec also has to retrain those who will serve as Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs), poll watchers and technicians, as well as reproduce instructional materials for them. (Comelec to push timeline back due to SC decision)
There has to be defined rules for various scenarios involving vote receipts which include the possibility of voters pulling on the vote receipts, destroying it, or refusing to deposit into the designated receptacles, Comelec said.
Other possibilities include the voter inserting a different piece of paper into the receptacle, or leaving without tearing off the vote receipt, exposing it to the next voter.
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Additional risks and expenditures according to the MR:
- Undertake a new vote-counting machine (VCM) trusted build, coupled with hardware upgrades (VCMs, printers)
- Reschedule of preelection Logical Accuracy Test activities, a rework of all the equipment already configured
- Regenerate all configuration files in the Election Management System
- Comprehensive testing of the new configuration files
- Reconfigure all training equipment already deployed
- Repeat training and certification activities of field staff, including BEIs, watchers, technicians
- Regenerate and reprint training materials, including renewal of physical arrangements (venue, sound systems, refreshments) for training purposes
- Evaluate the impact of availability of VCMs for pre-LAT
- Procure more than a million additional paper rolls, with the approved and printed designs and security features
- Procure new voting receipt receptacles to augment the available yellow metal boxes
- Widespread voter education campaign
- Refine standard operating procedures inside the polling place, which now adds
1) periodic replacement of paper rolls
2) assistance to voters in tearing off and disposing vote receipts
3) rebooting the VCM in case of paper jams and absence of paper
- Revise the published general instructions (GI) for the upcoming elections
- Determine statutory bases for use of vote receipts in random manual audit
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With these considerations laid out, however, the poll body has started heeding the high court’s order.
Last week, it opened the bidding for thermal paper supply and gathered representatives of candidates and political parties, focusing on the impacts of vote receipts in the elections.
It has also appealed to the SC to allow for a demonstration of the VCMs before members of the judiciary the soonest possible time.
‘The paper ballot is the VVPAT’
The Comelec has also reiterated its argument that the paper ballot itself is the voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) required by law.
The VVPAT, it said, can have “various meanings, and should not be translated exclusively into a voter receipt requirement,” Comelec said.
Earlier, the SC said the VVPAT is a system that enables individual voters to verify whether the machines have counted their votes, and provides for a paper-based verification at the minimum.
But Comelec argued that system auditability and voter verification provided for by law “does not require each voter to personally verify whether the VCMs have been able to count their votes.”
It added that the issuance of vote receipts is a “surplusage,” given that in the current system, there are numerous audit trails that protect the sanctity of the vote such as the paper ballot, the ballot image, storage media cards, and the on-screen verification (OSV) feature of VCMs.
Earlier, the Comelec has resolved to activate the OSV feature, which now “renders electronic electoral fraud highly improbable.”
Besides audit trails, the VCMs also have numerous security features.
These include the secured source code to ensure that votes are interpreted correctly, an ultraviolet lamp to ensure that no fake ballot is inserted to the machines, digital signatures of Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs), and a simultaneous storage of data in two media cards in the VCM.
Furthermore, the Comelec said that the paper ballot itself is the best evidence of votes cast, and not the vote receipts, which are prone to be used as a scheme for vote buying.
20-hr extension in voting
Comelec also argued the anticipated extension in voting hours, which it now estimates to last for 20 hours, given nearly 54.3 million voters in around 92,000 clustered precincts.
Four steps will be added in the election process if the vote receipts are printed. These include enabling of ambiguous marks in the screen, enabling of vote review screen, printing and tearing of vote receipts, and dropping of vote receipts into receptacles.
Paper jams and the absence of paper supply in the VCMs may cause the VCMs to shut down, the Comelec said.
In addition, the current VCMs are not capable of cutting the vote receipts. The existing paper cutter is only designed for cutting election returns.
When a voter tears the printed receipt and yanks the existing paper cutter, the likelihood of paper jams and printer failures will increase, which may impact the overall function of the VCMs.
A price too high to pay
As much as it wants to incorporate greater transparency and voter empowerment, Comelec says all it asks is a little “breathing space” that would allow for better planning, training, customization, budget preparation, testing and implementation.
“The Comelec stands with the Court in this laudable pursuit. Nonetheless, this objective should not result in burning the house down and risking a failure of election, a catastrophic result that is too high a price to pay for the marginal improvement sought by petitioners,” Comelec said.
“Progress requires a sense of proportion, balance and timing,” it added.
