Thursday, November 06, 2008 US election technology, speed of results impress local officials
BARACK Obama won a mock election in a Cebu City mall yesterday, but apart from the outcome, it was the speed of the results that impressed local observers.
“I wish we could have the same in the Philippines. It makes voting less costly. You don’t need watchers. You get the results very quickly,” said Rep. Nerissa Soon-Ruiz (Cebu Province, 6th district) after she “voted” using one of three machines flown in by the US Embassy in Manila.
Two of the machines use the same technology that a team of Filipino inspectors checked during a visit to the United States in 1993, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) website.
One is an optical mark reader that requires voters to shade the ovals beside the names of their chosen candidates. These ballots are then fed through a scanner that counts the votes.
Also on display was a direct recording machine—a terminal similar to an ATM, where voters simply touch the screen to pick their candidates. A paper receipt allows voters to check that their choices were accurately recorded, before they cast their ballots, again by touching the screen.
“We have the budget to purchase all the computers, but the problem, foremost, is that not all areas have electricity,” said Soon-Ruiz. “But we will, hopefully, have certain areas in 2010 where the elections can be automated.”
Asked what he thought of the voting machines at the “election watch party” the embassy hosted at the SM North Wing, businessman Sabino Dapat quipped: “Only one word: Envy.”
“How I wish we could have something like this in the Philippines, so we won’t have to go through several days of anxiety and there would be fewer opportunities for people to cheat,” said Dapat, a trustee of the church-based group C-Cimpel, which has monitored elections in Cebu since 1992.
While citizen involvement makes Cebu’s elections credible, Dapat said it’s high time the country used more advanced technology in its elections.
Cebu City Councilor Sylvan Jakosalem said he finds it “unbelievable” that voting and counting technologies already in use for decades have yet to be widely used in Philippine elections.
Using these would mean “quick results, less work for Comelec, and less tension among the voters and the politicians. That’s a big plus.”
Deputy Chief of Mission Paul Jones, who led the embassy’s 30-member team in Cebu, explained that each state, not the federal government, decides what machines to use for the elections.
But more important than the technology used, he said, was the reminder of “what both our countries share, which is our commitment to democracy.”
By noon local time—less than 18 hours after polling centers opened in the United States—both CNN and CNBC called the elections in favor of Obama, the first African-American to win the US presidency.
Half an hour later, the Cebu mock election’s results were announced: 211 votes for Obama, 95 for Republican candidate John McCain.
“We cannot say it’s the lack of budget (that’s keeping the Philippines from automating its elections). It’s the political will of the people running the country,” said Jakosalem. “Sad to say, but they prefer the old system.” (IDA)
