Category: elections
News: If machines fail, teachers not ready for manual count
A teacher reviews the manual for a PCOS machine during a trial run Monday at Marikina High School. The device registered “thermal paper error” 20 times, forcing her and other election inspectors to ask for a replacement.
Inquirer.net: MANILA, Philippines—Teachers manning precincts on Election Day will be at a loss on what to do in case the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines still do not function properly.
The teachers are not prepared for manual counting, Abelardo Brutas, secretary general of the Teachers in the Philippine Public Sector (TOPPS, said.
Brutas said one of the hindrances to manual voting is the clustering of precincts. A clustered precinct could have up to a thousand voters.
Manual elections would only be possible if the Commission on Elections (Comelec) restores the original number of precincts, which is quite impossible at this time, he said.
“Definitely, we cannot handle the clustered precincts, where we have to deal with about a thousand voters per precinct,” Brutas said.
A total of 229,020 teachers is to be deployed for Monday’s elections as members of the board of election inspectors.
Even Alkhadam Sakandal, an election supervisor of Zamboanga City, acknowledged that it would be difficult for the Comelec to return to the manual process.
Too late
“Our efforts were focused on automation,” he said.
Sakandal said that even if measures were taken to adopt manual voting as a contingency measure, it was already too late with less than a week to Election Day.
“Besides, we need to appoint more BEIs (board of election inspectors) to go back to the manual process,” Sakandal said.
In Basilan, the local Church-backed watchdog group Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) said reverting to manual counting would be confusing.
Fr. Santiago Agoo, PPCRV chair in Isabela City, said nobody had expected the glitches to occur because both the Comelec and Smartmatic had issued assurances the machines were working fine.
The Comelec has halted the deliveries of the machines to the provinces and ordered a recall of the compact flash cards after tests showed that the names of local candidates would not be recognized by the machines.
“We didn’t expect this to happen. We are all geared up for automation and we still do not know how to go about [manual counting] if automation will not push through,” Agoo said.
He said going back to the manual process at this time “will be very tedious, very dangerous and logistics wise, we cannot cope with.”
But Education Undersecretary Franklin Sunga said the teachers were prepared to do their job in case the Comelec holds special elections in far-flung areas, or reverts to manual count.
No guidelines
The Comelec has not issued guidelines for manual counting, Sunga said.
“There are still no guidelines. There is a need for guidelines before we can proceed with this. But we cannot say that our teachers will not know what to do because there are no guidelines,” he said.
Besides, Sunga added, the counting by the PCOS machines would be automated and the election results would be electronically transmitted, saving time and avoiding ballot-snatching.
Helen Aguila-Flores, the Comelec head in Western Mindanao, however, said the agency had no alternative to automation.
“I am sorry to say this, but the Comelec has no contingency measures if automation failed,” Flores said at Thursday’s meeting of civilian, police and military officials at the headquarters of the Western Mindanao Command in Zamboanga City.
“That Comelec has no contingency plan in case automation fails is a reality that I want everyone to wake up to,” she said. “Hopefully, we can cross the bridge when we get there.”
Press Release: Comelec-Private Sector Agreement in Jeopardy
Leaders of the private sector today asked the Comelec to put guidelines in place to help ensure the credibility of the elections by fulfilling an agreement made during a five-hour dialogue they had with Comelec officials last April 16.
In a letter to Comelec Chair Jose Melo and the Comelec Commissioners, TransparentElections.org Chair Gus Lagman and Alyansa Agrikultura Chair Ernesto Ordonez asked the Comelec to fulfill an earlier agreement that would help ensure transparency and accountability at the canvassing centers during the election period.
Prior to the April 16 meeting, they had heard a plan that Comelec would mandate only the posting of the canvassing center vote totals (Certificate of Canvass-COC) without the precinct vote totals (Statement of Votes- SOV’s). Lagman said this would not allow the comparison of the vote count seen at the precinct level with the precinct vote recorded at the canvassing center. In addition, this would not allow the verification of whether the total canvassing center vote recorded had accurately included the vote count in each precinct. “Without this safeguard Comelec had earlier agreed to, we have a sure formula for dagdag-bawas,” Ordonez said.
To ensure that this agreement is implemented, the proponents recommended that the agreement’s implementation procedure should be included in the Comelec’s General Instructions (G.I.’s) for the canvassing centers. Since this has not been done, the agreement’s implementation is now severely jeopardized. The letter was submitted to the Comelec Head Office after an 11a.m. multisectoral ecumenical prayer service held during the ongoing 24 hour vigil at Plaza Roma in front of the Comelec office in Intramuros.
In an earlier letter, the proponents had stated that the 1.5% sample recommended by Comelec to be used for the manual audit was grossly inadequate. They suggested that the sample be increased to come as close as possible to the original 100% precinct audit they had originally recommended, but only for three positions. They also disagreed with the description earlier given in an official Comelec document that they were suggesting a “full parallel manual count”, when they were actually recommending that only three positions be counted, which would have take only a maximum of three extra hours to execute per precinct. They now say they are willing to decrease this number to two or one, if necessary.
News: A “simple and effective guide” to evaluate your candidates
INQUIRER.net: MANILA, Philippines – Still in doubt about your choice of candidates for the May 10 presidential elections? This voter’s scorecard might help you come up with that intelligent, no-regrets decision.
Launched on Friday as the first of its kind in Philippine politics, the scorecard provides “simple and effective guide” to evaluate candidates based on three Es – effectiveness, empowering, and ethical leadership.
The criteria were initiated by the Movement for Good Governance (MGG), a non-partisan, multi-sectoral citizen’s movement, to help voters make the wise choice.
“Instead of saying we want this senator or presidential candidate because we know him or because he is popular, the voters can use the scorecard to evaluate if the candidate has the competence, integrity and care for the poor. We encourage people to evaluate each candidate based on the scorecard,” said Milwida “Nene” Guevarra, one of the convenors of the group.
In a news conference, Guevarra said that voters could assess the candidates based on the three leadership criteria and grade them with 1 (poor), 2 (good), 3 (very good).
Instead of bringing a sample ballot on election day, Guevarra said voters could instead bring their scorecard to guide them in choosing who to vote.
“That way, [our vote] is not dependent on who gives us the sample ballot, but it will depend on how we have evaluated the candidates in terms of the way we feel they are in terms of criteria that we can agree with,” she said, stressing that the scorecard then becomes an empowering tool for the citizens.
The scorecard, which has English and Filipino versions, was crafted using local and international governance benchmarks from Gawad Galing Pook, the World Bank, and the United Nations. It was polished after a series of workshops with multi-sectoral groups, and then finalized with the help of the Personnel Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP), the country’s leading human resource organization.
Guevarra said the scorecard looked at the candidates’ effectiveness or their ability and track record to perform their duty; empowerment, or the candidates’ ability to unite and engage sectors to develop and implement policies and programs that meet the genuine needs of the people; and ethical, which affirms the need for the candidates’ integrity and character.
She said the scorecard has been tested in several schools, where students were asked to choose their presidential candidates first without the scorecard, then listen to a debate of the candidates, and then grade them using the scorecard.
“You can see that there’s a very, very big change in their choice. For example, initially [Senator Francis] Chiz [Escudero] did well, then after the debate and after the students saw the scorecards, they go for [Senator Richard] Gordon,” Guevarra said.
“You can see that people get to be influenced by criteria so when you tend to focus their choices on criteria, their choices differ and what they really want for their choice is to be sound and based on good characteristics,” she added.
Escudero eventually did not pursue his presidential bid.
With 10 days to go before election day, MGG hopes the scorecard can help make the voters choose the right public servants.
News: Manual count rule out today; issues cited
BusinessWorld Online: THE COMMISSION on Elections (Comelec) releases today its unanimous decision on the proposed parallel manual count for national and local positions, with officials hinting an adverse ruling.
“It is not the number of positions involved… Is it proper? Is it legal?… It is of doubtful legality,” said Comelec Chairman Jose A. R. Melo in an interview.
Comelec spokesman James Arthur B. Jimenez said in a separate interview the unanimous verdict considered the input of the commission’s field officials who will conduct the count.
For his part, Commissioner Rene V. Sarmiento said that their field officials were against the proposal due to operational and logistical concerns.
Aside from field official feedback, he said the Comelec Adivsory Council’s (CAC) opinion was also considered.
CAC member Ramon C. Casiple earlier said that the parallel manual count should be conducted by an independent body such as the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) and not by the Comelec.
But Mr. Sarmiento said the parallel count goes against the principles of the random manual count (RMA) as provided for under the automated election law or Republic Act 9369.
“[The law] does not forbid [or] allow [parallel manual count]. [But] it goes against the principles of random manual audit… [In] parallel manual count, all would be counted. Random would be selective. The process is different,” Mr. Sarmiento said.
In a minute resolution of the full commission meeting last April 5, the poll body increased the number of precincts that would be subjected to RMA to five per legislative district from one as provided for by law.
A total of 1,145 precincts would be audited for 229 legislative districts, the resolution read.
Representatives of various groups such as the Makati Business Club (MBC), Management Association of the Philippines, Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines, Alyansa Agrikultura, Philippine Bar Association of the Philippines and information technology professionals held a dialogue with the full commission last Monday to present their proposal for the parallel manual count.
In a letter submitted to the Comelec, the groups said April 29 is the cutoff date to decide on whether or not to hold a parallel manual count.
Compromise
Meanwhile, Namfrel council member Maricor K. Akol said in a separate briefing that the group is willing to trim the positions covered by the manual count to one — the president — from three to include the vice-president and a local position.
“If they are saying that it is going to be expensive and will delay the proclamation, we are willing to bend what we are demanding and limit it to just one candidate,” she said.
Ms. Akol said the law is silent on the random parallel count of votes.
“The Comelec has argued originally that there is a legal bar in this proposal. If you recall, when they said that they used the wrong UV (ultraviolet) ink, their solution was to buy UV lamps to manually verify what was originally an automated activity. They decided on this matter without the benefit of the law. They purchased 80,000 handheld UV lamps to manually verify the ballot. This is the same principle in the parallel manual count,” Namfrel council member Guillermo M. Luz explained.
The commission, he claimed, is printing manual forms for 30% of all the precincts in case there is a failure of automated polls. “What we and the IT professionals are suggesting is for them to already print forms for 100% of the precincts for this verification run.”
The Namfrel has also called for the release of the final guidelines for the random manual audit which have been left pending at the Comelec technical committee.
“We have been asking the Comelec for the GI (general instructions) because this will be the guidelines and basis of the Board of Election Inspectors to proceed with the parallel verification run,” said Namfrel national chairman Jose L. Cuisia, Jr.
In a related development, all precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines for Visayas and Mindanao have been shipped out from the main warehouse in Laguna province east of Metro Manila, while over half (57%) of the machines assigned for Luzon have been delivered, Comelec said.
A total of 17,077 units were sent to Visayas while 18,202 were delivered to Mindanao.
As of 10 a.m. of April 27, the official ballots deployed totaled 3,594 (21%) for Visayas and 12,936 (71%) for Mindanao.
The ballots are either in transit or have been delivered to the provinces and municipalities.
2010 Election Scorecard for Voters
The MGG Scorecard
English | Filipino
The Movement for Good Governance (MGG), the country’s foremost non-partisan, multisectoral citizens’ movement, is launching a pioneering election tool for voters called the Scorecard that will enable citizens to vote wisely in the upcoming May elections.
The MGG Scorecard is the first of its kind in Philippine politics. It is a simple and effective guide to evaluate candidates based on three key leadership criteria: effectiveness, empowering, and ethical leadership.
The criteria was initiated by MGG using diverse local and international governance benchmarks from Gawad Galing Pook, the World Bank, and the UN. The scorecard was finalized with the assistance of the Personnel Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP), the country’s leading human resource organization.
“This is the first time, not only for the Philippines, but other democracies, where citizens and voters are empowered to choose their leaders wisely,” said Prof. Solita Monsod, MGG Chair. “This scorecard helps Filipinos regardless of social class and background to evaluate candidates in terms of whether they are fit for public office. It enables voters to critically think through all the information, jingles, and gimmicks thrown at them by political campaigns.”
The MGG Scorecard (see attached) uses three equally vital leadership criteria and simple guide questions. It looks at a candidate’s effectiveness, or their ability and track record to perform their duty; empowerment, or a candidate’s ability to unite and engage stakeholders to develop and implement policies and programs that meet genuine needs of the populace; and, ethical, which affirms the need for the candidates integrity and character.
“These three complementary traits are all necessary for our country to be governed as we deserve, and the scorecard allows voters to grade candidates on each criteria using simple guide questions. It also ranks the candidates’ total scores — on a basic 1 to 3 score — to determine who among them meets these traits the best,” says Dr. Milwida Guevara, MGG founder and Gawad Haydee Yorac Awardee.
The scorecard will be shared through MGG’s coalition in the remaining dates of the elections to enable Filipinos to make 2010 count. MGG partner PoliticalArena.com has provided both free mobile and internet access for citizens to add to their information to evaluate candidates effectively to make it easier for citizens to compare facts and actual data on candidate’s performance, personal character, and leadership traits.
“As a pioneering tool for the Filipino voter, we aim to use and continue sharing this not only in 2010, not only in future elections, but also in helping citizens develop a mindset for identifying and choosing excellence in their public leaders. In doing so, they transform themselves into an empowered, vigilant, and demanding citizenry that is vital to making democracy and development work in the Philippines,” Guevara added.
The scorecard may be downloaded from MGG partner websites and will be disseminated to key cities and communities up to election day.
The Movement for Good Governance 