Thursday, March 22, 2007 Covington: E-voting By Gary Covington Looking in
ESTONIA, a tiny nation next to Finland and a nation whose parliament has declared access to the internet a basic human right, has become the first nation to allow votes in its general election to be cast online.
Why can’t the Philippines do that? Or start doing that? Say, half do that?
“Ah,” you say, “How would we prevent online multiple voting and other fiddle-factors?”
Easy. Most of us have an identification number of some sort – TIN, driving license, passport, SSS and so on – and these numbers must be known to the government and maybe even Comelec. It’s the reason we’re forever filling in forms; all of us are on file somewhere.
Load all that information into a mother computer. If an e-vote arrives with a number (any one of them) mismatching a name, out it goes. Vote null and void. No humming and hawing. Finish.
“Ah,” you next say,” how much of the population has access to computers and the internet?”
What proportion of the population votes anyway? And, of those, what proportion actually knows what’s going on? And haven’t I been reading of especially equipped buses touring far and wide over the hilly green yonder, bringing the wonders of computering and the internet to the country folk.
Online voting would do away with the paper ballot. No more sticky fingers as votes were counted. No more ferrying yellow boxes as if they contained the crown jewels. No need to burn down the Comelec building. Internet cafes – there’s a few about – would become voting stations. E-voting has to happen. Why not start preparing now and be ready for the next general election. Skip automated ballot counting – go straight to e-voting.
Moving on and up there in manic Manila ABS-CBN has been wringing the last drop of news from the Taguig City hostage drama. The hostage taker, in the video clips waving a teeny-weeny pistol, was gunned down by a great mob of SWAT guys – none of this namby-pamby incapacitating wounding stuff; blam, blam, blam, you’re a goner Juan – but – did you hear what the hostage taker was protesting about?
A land dispute. Which, after four years in the courts, has yet to go to trail. Four years. And, we wonder why folks take matters into their own hands. It may not be right but……
Politics and Davao del Norte and I love this. Dad says you will run for governor and you will not and you – vice governing’s a drag anyway – can be a campaign manager. Nothing at all to do with the people, the electorate, the folks, the governor will be governing. Of course, he might not win. Bets anyone?
Corruption is in the headlines once more but why do I never hear or see anyone pointing out that the rot starts at the bottom and merely gets grander the higher you go? If you and I didn’t pay rush money or a sweetener to the humble clerk at the bottom of the pile then he wouldn’t have the means to reward the next guy up the tree. Corruption has to stop at the bottom before we earn the right to point fingers at the top.
Lastly and Friday we palefaces took quite a bashing from the pen of fellow scribbler Jun Ledesma who, describing an encounter with an Aussie, employed the word ‘bastard’. It’s a free world Jun but isn’t bastard in its derogatory sense – in most cultures a major insult – a trifle excessive? I’m amazed the editors let it through. I know that if I used the term, in print, referring to a Filipino, I’d be out on the streets, fingers broken, to scribble no more.
