Automated Election in the Philippines

Election is nearly coming. Candidates for the election are preparing for their campaigns. Everybody on the political world is very busy preparing for it. Also, we, the voters are also busy choosing on whom to vote for.

Election next year will be very different because it will not be done manually. The election next year will be automated. These really show that technology is really evolving and is in our setting today. Everything comes in new technology today and whether we like it or not, technology is really growing. These new technologies make our life easier.

But will be automated election preferable than manual election?
Smartmatic-Total Information System (Smartmatic -TIM), the joint venture that bagged the contract to automate Philippine polls, is confident that the technology it will be using in the 2010 polls have enough safeguards to secure the votes of the Filipino electorate.

Because of allegations of poll fraud and manipulation of vote counts in past elections, the Philippines has embarked on a major project to automate voting, using machines that can scan ballots, print and transmit results that could declare winners within two hours at the local level and about 36 hours at the national level.

About 82,200 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines will be deployed nationwide. Each machine is programmed to read about 1,000 ballots from four to five polling precincts at 350,000 locations across the archipelago.

The elections commission said the automation process will minimise human intervention in the process and reduce allegations of fraud. It would speed up the process, giving it a result within two days instead of the weeks it has taken in the past.

How to vote

The ballot itself, could accommodate 600 choices – candidates and party-list groups and would be double-sided.

A voter is required to shade or fill in the oval shape to the right of the name of his chosen candidate. He said, as of now, permanent ink would be used and pens would be provided to the voter.

After making his choices, the voter himself would have to feed the ballot into the machine and not any member of the Board of Election Inspectors who would be supervising the polls at the precinct level. The ballot can be inserted in any orientation.

As each ballot is cast, the system stores and interprets images of the scanned ballot. If, in voting for president, a voter mistakenly marks two ovals—corresponding to voters for two presidential candidates—the SAES 1800 would consider it an invalid vote.

The machine however would still process and count the other valid choices in the voter’s ballot. Moreover, if the voter does not make any markings on ovals across the names of presidential candidates, the machine will interpret this to mean that the voter has decided not to vote for anybody for that position and would still accept it as a valid ballot.

An issue that still has to be decided upon, he said, are the so-called ambiguous votes, i.e. the oval was only partially shaded such as that only a dot could be indicated. He said they would need a policy decision from Comelec on this. He said, however, that the machine would count a check or X mark by the voter in the oval.

How votes are counted

After inserting his ballot, the voter would be informed, through the machine’s liquid crystal display (LCD), that his vote was counted by the increment on the indicator of the number of ballots counted. The ballot would then be fed by the machine on the bin in the ballot box which would contain valid ballots. Invalid ballots would be fed into a separate compartment in the ballot box.

At the end of the voting day, the chairman of the Board of Election Inspectors in that precinct would then use a special key to close voting for that precinct. The members then input their respective passwords into the machine.

After this, the machine would then interpret the images stored in its databank and print out the results of the elections in the precincts on thermal paper. The results of the national elections would first be printed out – and reprinted according to the copies needed – followed by results of the local elections.

In the printout, which would be two inches in width but would probably be several feet long, provisions are made for the signatures of the BEI chairman and members as well as the pollwatchers of political parties, candidates and party-list groups. The printouts would serve as the Election Returns (ERs) of the precinct.

After the ERs have been printed, the BEI officers will then be able to trigger the machine to transmit poll results to the municipal board of canvassers.

Transmission process

Where possible, transmission of votes will be done through any available telecommunication network. He said that the consortium would be conducting a nation-wide site survey to check for the availability of communication signals at every precinct.

In the cases where no communication facilities are available, the consortium and Comelec might use satellite communications using Satellite Internet VSAT (Very small aperture terminal) technology.

Even if a machine fails to transmit results, or in very difficult areas where transmission could not be established, the memory cards can be physically transported and inserted into “specially-configured terminals.”

PCOS machines that would fail during the election process would be replaced by “specially-configured machines”. The machines, which run on basic Linux operating systems, do not have their own hard drives. Instead, each will have two memory cards which would contain the software, the data that will identify each specific machine, and the voting results.

The machine only has a small operating system, the data for each precinct meanwhile would be encrypted into the memory card and only programmed at the main center before each machine is transported. Only their main processing center would be able to place critical data into the memory cards.

The memory card can store up to 2,000 images. Assuming that each ballot will have two sides, this means it each machine will be able to accommodate a maximum of 1,000 voters per clustered precinct.

Security features

The system has security and audit features at various levels.
For starters, the ballots that would be used for the 2010 polls would contain a number of security features.

Each ballot will have a bar code at the bottom of each ballot which would indicate the area and the precinct where the ballot should be used. The PCOS machine would only read ballots assigned to it and would reject and not process those which are not.

The markings using ultraviolet ink would also be used in the ballot. Without the ultraviolet markings, the machine would reject it. Comelec would also place other security marks into the ballot.

Only authorized personnel who would be issued a special key and passwords specific for each memory card and PCOS machine will be able to operate the machines.

The special key will be given to the BEI chairman. To perform these three actions—starting the election process, closing the casting of ballots, and transmitting results—the BEI chair will need to use this key. The action will be confirmed by the other members of the BEI who will have to enter their respective passwords into the system.

No need for separate quick counts?

Using the new automated system, that 90% of election results nationwide could be available 5-6 hours after the closing of the precincts.

There could be factors that would delay the overall results, such as delayed voting or the need to manually transport the memory cards from the precinct to a place where telecommunications systems are available.

Other factors involve some policies that would have to be decided upon by the Comelec. An example was for the transmission of the official municipal canvas report to the provincial board of canvassers.

Maybe, the automated process can be an efficient and fast method of counting votes for the election. But in terms of security, because it is automated, there can still be flaws. We cannot just say that there will be no cheating in the next election because it will be automated. Experts have listed a number of potential causes to disrupt the machines and make transmission of election results difficult. Potential problems listed by experts include hacking and "system buffer overflow", which can result in corrupted data and crashes.

Even though it will be done manually or automated, Cheating in elections will not be easily eradicated or minimized unless we voters will become more watchful and observant and unless also the candidates want a clean and honest election.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/9/11/worldupdates/2009-09-11T162249Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_-423909-1&sec=Worldupdates
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/07/23/09/automation-tech-secure-%E2%80%93-smartmatic-tim