Automated Election this incoming 2010-advantage or disadvantage?

As a BSIT student, one must be aware enough of the current issues related with your chosen degree, certainly, new technologies. For a hotter scenario in the country, Automated Election this coming 2010 .

Filipinos nowadays are having doubts in the wisdom of participating in the voting exercise, saying many good candidates win because of shameless cheating in the polls, they may now witness honest elections, be assured that their vote will be counted, that there will be no flying voters, and no dagdag-bawas (adding and subtracting votes) — starting with the 2010 polls.
Recently, on the evening of March 5 the P11.3-billion budget that the Commission on Elections needs to fully automate the May 2010 presidential elections had approved by the Senate.
Consequently, the May 2004 elections were done manually, from the voting to the canvassing of the results. Independent Senator Richard “Dick” Gordon recalls that the process “was slow, tedious, and subject to criticism since the security of the electoral process and its capacity to preserve the sanctity of the ballot and the will of the electorate was put to question.”

(http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleid=447176)

Automated Election System (AES) assures electronic transmission of electoral results from the precinct level to Congress, the various board of canvassers, the parties, the accredited citizens’ arm, and the media. “This prevents wholesale cheating because tampering with the Certificates of Canvass will no longer be possible. The election returns and certificates of canvass transmitted electronically and digitally signed shall be considered as official election results and shall be used as basis for the proclamation of a candidate.”

“Automation also means speed, giving no time for the sore loser to tamper with the ballot. The longer the period between the time that the vote is cast and the time that the winners are announced, the greater the time and opportunity to tamper with the results. This leads to violent elections as losing candidates who feel the stab of every vote counted against him or her, begin to resort to extra-legal means to change the tide of their fate. The psychological effect of impending loss, and the shame of losing face prompt losing candidates to use guns, goons and gold to tamper with the ballot.
The Automation Law, he said, is “more than just an Automation Law. It is a commitment to respecting the right of our people to choose those who will lead them. It is a launching pad for a renewed sense of unity among our countrymen through the assurance that the process through which they choose their leaders is clean, free and credible. Let us be united in trying to bring about transparent, free and clean elections.”
If the Philippine government ever gets down to automating elections in the Philippines, it has a chance to show the rest of the world how to do it. That’s because there’s already a lot of established “wisdom”, and the mistakes of other countries to learn from.

In reference to: http://technogra.ph/20090303/sections/editorial/how-the-philippines-can-in-lead-election-automation/

Here are some of the mistakes associated in automated election:
Problems in Other Countries

Forget about the cost of funding such a project (the COMELEC has asked for P11.3 billion). How can we make the automated system easy to use? Around two years ago in Florida, a poorly designed voting machine led to 13% not casting their vote for their desired representative. The touch-screen interface was inconsistent, leading to confusion and a phenomenon known as “banner blindness”.

In Finland, the lack of clear instructions (and once again, a poorly designed process) led to 232 voters (out of 12,234) not finishing the voting process. These voters failed to notice that they had to “validate” their votes after making their picks.

These numbers may not seem significant. But if you’re running a nationwide election, with millions of votes to process, these errors will increase in scale. Imagine the situation here in the Philippines, as election sore losers and naysayers have yet another reason to keep the new officials from simply getting down to business.

The Missing Ingredient: Designing Machines for the Voter
So why did these two systems, as well as countless others, fail? Based on my research, those managing automated elections always overlook a crucial factor: usability. No election machine designer seems to consider the user experience, or how the average user will react to their device. Or at least, consider the advice of an expert used to anticipating and accommodating these reactions.

The process of marking a paper ballot is straightforward, because it mimics an activity most Filipinos do—writing on a piece of paper. And even then, some people get it wrong; what more if you force people to vote in a way they’re not used to? The majority of election machines fail to take this reality into account properly.

How to Get Things Right

Most systems also lack the benefit of sustained and controlled testing. The real-world conditions of an actual election are hard to simulate through a controlled experiment. Since election systems serve a crucial role, it’s important to get things right. You need to first test them on a small scale, and resolve any issues encountered. Before you can even think of wide-scale implementation, all potential problems—and their solutions—must be clear.

Granted, other countries have implemented testing on a small scale (like in the case of Florida above). But there’s a noticeable lack of learning from the results of these tests. It seems those who implement automated election systems don’t learn from their mistakes.

Ready for 2010?

In short, by looking from the mistakes of other countries, Philippine election officials can learn how to run automated elections properly. Primarily by designing election machines that make sense to the average Filipino voter, and relying on the results of sustained testing for any necessary revisions to the system.

Unfortunately, since the need for testing is crucial—unless you consider chaos on Election Day acceptable—a properly automated election system may not be ready by 2010. Yet no matter how clear the benefits of automated elections are for Philippine politics, it’s more important to get things right the first time. That’s much better than coming out with a system that will provide election automation critics with more bombs.

Moreover, it is cited in Inquirer.net the following possibilities that would happen if an election will be automated:

http://services.inquirer.net/print/print.php?article_id=20090315-194313

Many ways to cheat
If we look at the election process, there are many ways to cheat.

1. People in power or with lots of money could buy support from local leaders or directly from voters.No automated system can prevent this.
   
2. In the old days of guns and goons, voters were either coerced to vote for certain candidates or scared away and their ballots used.We thought we had progressed beyond this. Unfortunately, cheating prevailed in 2007 in Maguindanao and other areas.
3. Ballot box stuffing or ballot substitution.With the proposed Comelec Automated Election System, ballots would have to be substituted before these are fed into the counting machine.This is a little more difficult, but the actual production of the fake marked ballots is a lot easier. And it is harder to identify ballots marked by one person.
4. Misreading/mistallying of votes during precinct count.Normally, OMR counting machines can be very accurate. But who can tell if the machine has been programmed for automated and undetected dagdag bawas? Comelec has not done enough to assure the public that this will not happen.
   
5. Substitution of election returns (ER).This may have happened in the 2004 elections in ARMM.We suspect that in Pampanga, Cebu, Iloilo and Bohol, Namfrel and the other parties may have been given fake ERs.An honest, automated system would prevent the substitution of ERs with previously prepared faked ERs. But we can never tell if manipulation is done inside the OMR counting machine.
6. Substitution of ballot box and ER on the way to the municipality.In the automated system, electronic ERs would be sent to the municipal canvassing center through the communication system.How can we be sure that the results transmitted are not changed at the source or at the receiving end?
7. Fraud in the computation of the municipal COC.This is hard to detect if the precinct results are not visible to watchers.In the automated system, we will not see how computations are done in the canvassing server. There is no independent means to cross check what the server generates.I think that contrary to the common belief that delays create opportunities for cheating, some delays are needed for checking and auditing.In an automated election, moving too fast without checks and audits could result in massive cheating.
8. Substitution of Municipal COCs on the way to the province.This could have happened in Muslim Mindanao in 2004.Proponents of automated systems suggest that this would be prevented with secure electronic transmission. There still is the possibility of manipulation within the system.
9. Fraud in the computation of the provincial COC.This could have happened in 2004 and could happen again within the provincial canvassing server.
10. Substitution of COCs on the way to Congress and Comelec.This could have happened in 2004. And even with an automated system, this could still happen.
11. Errors in computation of national total.

Counting machines
The P9.5 billion the Comelec intends to spend on the rental of 80,000 OMR reading machines will not hasten the completion of national election counting. But the use of reading machines could lessen retail cheating in peaceful areas.
However, OMR voting is not a deterrent. For cheaters, OMR voting facilitates the production of ballots.
Hazards and safeguards
Comelec would like us to assume that automation will prevent cheating.
That is not true. Let us make sure that safeguards and audits are instituted.
The OMR system is similar to the classic, paper-based election system, except that:

1. Voters mark candidate of choice instead of writing the name.
2. The OMR ballots are machine-counted instead of being read and tallied.

For those who think that cheating can only take place when human hands are involved, this would look like a fraud-free system.
Comelec's new procedure calls for each voter to physically feed his ballot into the machine.

A picture of the ballot is then taken.

As we pointed out earlier, the voter in some areas may be influenced or forced to feed another ballot into the machine.

Programmed to cheat.

Let us pretend we are in a precinct where law and order prevails, and you are the voter feeding in your ballot.

How can you be sure that the machine will not change one or more of your votes?

How can you be sure that the total votes in the printed ER are truly what the voters in the cluster voted for?

The law provides for testing of the machines prior to Election Day.

If the machines are not stand-alone, how can you be sure that a modified program was not downloaded on Election Day to add votes for certain candidates and subtract from others (electronic dagdag bawas)?

At the end of counting, the original program could be restored.

The Election Law should call for stand-alone machines.

To verify that the OMR machines are counting properly, the two parties and the

Citizens Arm should be allowed to run their test ballots before the start of counting and at the end of counting.

If discrepancies are detected, these should be noted and could be the basis for reverting to a manual count or a protest.
Safeguards

The Comelec proposes to automatically transmit election returns from the 80,000 OMR counting machines to the municipal servers.

While this is the fastest way to do it, it does not guarantee honest elections and does not provide transparency of the election counting process.

If the OMR counting machines can send electronic ERs to the municipal servers through the communication system, someone who knows the system well could change the programs on the machines from a remote and undetected location.

The best way to detect fraud is to create and provide at least seven printed and electronic copies of the ER.

The OMR Counting Machines should not be equipped with any communication capability.

There should be a separate stand-alone PC from where the ERs can be sent to the municipal canvassing/consolidation server as well as to the seven organizations entitled to receive the seven copies of the ER.

The Comelec AES does not provide for visible canvassing or parallel transmission and canvassing.

This will raise concerns about the honesty of the count and would certainly result in a loss of credibility of the results.

The Comelec should provide PCs for the major parties in each municipal tabulation center.

There should also be at least three projectors in each canvassing center.

The projectors would show the statement of vote for the municipality.

Watchers would be able to compare the projected totals on the three computers (Comelec, majority and opposition).

The COC should not be finalized until the discrepancies are resolved.

There are 1,631 cities and municipalities, 80 provinces, 13 regions and two national canvassing centers for a total of 1,736 sets.

Let’s provide 10-percent backup sets. That would be 1,910, let’s say 2,000.

The total cost would only be P360 million.

Cost reduction

One could easily reduce the cost of the OMR Counting Machines by increasing the cluster size per OMR machine to 10 and allowing feeding of ballots into the machines by the BEI after the end of voting.

That would mean savings of at least P4.5 billion, which is more than enough to pay for a transparent and more credible transmission and canvassing system.

Hopefully, wholesale cheating could be lessened.

But let us not expect canvassing for national candidates to be done in three to four days.

In general, it provides efficient way for voting with less hassle. Voters cannot prolong the process of voting and lined up in a crowd. But a thought came across my mind. This could be the cause to worsen political situation. Possibilities for the candidates can hire a computer experts to hack the system and manipulate the entire votes. Unless if the system is fully secured.

But still the decision is in you. You can have your voice. This is a republic country anyway.