OPINION: COMELEC CAUGHT DIZZY ON POLL PREPARATIONS
MANILA, NOVEMBER 6, 2009 (STAR) GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc - Reportedly the MWSS has authorized Maynilad Water Services Inc. and Manila Water Co. to tap their own raw water supply. For this the distributors will collect P1 billion each per year from customers for 15 years. (Manila Water allegedly already raised P760 million since Jan.) Do the two already have plans where to buy raw water to cover the shortage of 1,200 million liters a day? Maybe there should be no more ado about building a costly, risky, ruinous and disruptive Laiban Dam in Rizal.* * *
The Comelec will let 690 doubtful centenarians in Taguig City vote in May’s national-local elections. The poll body says it has no more time to check the voters’ backgrounds, so will have to presume them all correct.
They just don’t get it. Since it is statistically impossible for tiny Taguig to have that many voters over 100 years old, the Comelec all the more must probe likely fraud. It cannot just pass off to a software default the existence of 261 centenarians with the same birthday. Fine, the voters may have left their birthdays blank in registering, so the database program automatically entered “Jan. 1, 1901”. But that’s precisely the point. The voter list-up was so shoddy it allowed deficient info. The non-filing of birthdays could have been deliberate, by multiple registrants who will be flying voters on Election Day. All 82 provinces, 130 cities, 238 districts and 1,514 municipalities might have the same mess as Taguig’s. And the Comelec, indisposed to investigate, won’t know till it’s too late — when general computerized fraud occurs with RP’s first nationwide automated balloting.
Something’s clearly wrong. An impossible 127-year-old voter couldn’t be located in his given address. One of the 261 same-birthday registrants no longer lives in Taguig. So what’s the Comelec waiting for?
Perhaps the election managers are plain dizzy. On the crucial issue of tracking the whereabouts of all 82,200 vote-counters before, during and after balloting, they can’t pick the obvious technology. It’s about security. Comelec logistics providers must pinpoint the exact location of each machine at any time from delivery from abroad, to deployment in clustered precinct three days before Election Day, and transfer to canvassing centers. The units could be hijacked for tampering or destruction in any of the 7,107 islands, so must be tightly watched.
Three options were presented to the Comelec: barcode, RFID (radio frequency identification), and GPS (global positioning satellite). The first two won’t do. Even with numerous hand-held and fixed barcode or RF readers, the machines could get lost if transporters deviate from designated routes. Once pilfered, the machines won’t be tracked anymore. By contrast, GPS can monitor round-the-clock even deviations from delivery plans, down to one-meter increments.
So what do the poll managers prefer? There will be another hearing today. They’re partial to RFID because supposedly cheaper than GPS by half. Fear of potential public backlash blinds them from astuteness. Yet they have P4 billion in savings from automation: they had budgeted P11.2 billion, but Smartmatic-TIM bid only P7.3 billion.
On the equally critical matter of voter education, the Comelec brass is stinting on an estimated P500 million for media advertising. This, despite the undisputable need for massive info drive. Filipinos are unfamiliar with the untried way of shading bubbles on back-to-back faces of two-foot-long ballots, then feeding these to electronic vote scanners. Mistakenly shading more than 12 senatorial candidates’ names would nullify all votes for senator. Over-shading could bleed ink to the other side of the ballot, invalidating it. With 45 million voters, myriad mishaps can happen. Half a billion pesos to teach voters automation can avert flawed balloting.
Perhaps the Comelec needs reminding about what happened in Ireland. For three years the country had been preparing to dispense with “stupid old pencils” in elections. More than 51 million euros was spent on direct-recording electronic (or touch-screen) machines. Last Apr. parliament scrapped the project. It wasn’t so much due to an additional cost of 28 million euros. The Irish simply mistrust the machines that would record their votes with mere electronic blips in lieu of the usual tangible records. Filipinos too might resist the idea of no manual verification of machine counts. More so if agitated by losing candidates’ disinformation.
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A little note of lament is turned into something big. Last week reader Mars Ochoa rued that the families of seven soldiers who perished rescuing civilians from Ondoy’s floods were given only a few thousand pesos benefits. But a trucker who broke a travel ban by going to Iraq, and so was hostaged, was rewarded with a house and lot. To this Australian business leader Peter Wallace writes: “I too recognized the unsung heroes and decided we should help. I started a fund to build houses for the seven soldiers’ families. So far I have raised P670,000. Not a lot maybe, but I’m told a small house will cost only P75,000. So we have enough for all, but I want to go further. I will set up a foundation to do this for the families of all soldiers who die saving us. It’s not just this one time, so we’ll need to raise more.
“Alstom and Archie King are my two biggest contributors, along with Gardenia, and members of MAP and FINEX. Estee and I are putting in a bit too of course. If any of your readers wish to help, they can e-mail me at wbfplw@smartbro.net or text 0920-9292929.”
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“Some pray to embrace the cross; others pray to evade it. Some pray for eternal life; others want a permanent visa on earth.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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