Comelec eyes expanded random manual audit

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) might expand the coverage of random manual audit of ballots from a single precinct for every congressional district to five per district.

Election Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said the Comelec is expected to issue a resolution on the proposed expansion of the manual audit of ballots next week.

“Let’s wait for the resolution to be issued by en banc but it looks like five precincts per district. The other matters will be contained in the resolution. I don’t want to preempt (the decision),” Larrazabal said.

Electoral reform groups Automated Election System Watch, Center for People Empowerment in Governance and Consortium on Electoral Reforms have asked the Comelec to conduct a wider manual audit of ballots before the proclamation of election winners because a limited one would cast doubt on the results of the automated polls.

The Poll Automation Law stipulates the conduct of manual audit in a single precinct per legislative district, randomly selected by the Comelec.

A ballot box from the selected precinct will be audited to check if the ballots in it had been counted properly by the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines.

The Philippine National IT Standards Foundation, a group of Information Technology (IT) experts has also proposed a parallel manual count of votes for the president, vice president, and mayor.

They claimed that a “cheating program” can be hidden in the system of the PCOS machines, and that preset election results can be stored in memory cards.

The Comelec said they are willing to discuss the proposal.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said they are now finalizing the contingency plans to be implemented in case of failure in the automated election system such as counting, scanning, transmission, and consolidation of votes.

“The contingency plans give instruction to the Board of Election Inspectors on how to handle each one (system failure),” Jimenez said.

Jimenez also warned individuals and groups against undermining the credibility of the upcoming elections.

“Here is the thing: a deliberate, concerted and continuous attempt to undermine the credibility for an election is an election offense. So I would caution people who are minded to take this route to think about it twice,” he said. “If they think they have reason to believe that the election will be a failure for some reason, we invite them to present their evidence to us rather than engage in a campaign of fear mongering.”

Poll watchdog Bantay Eleksyon 2010 said the Comelec should not make questionable decisions from now on, to protect the credibility of the upcoming elections.   – With Sheila Crisostomo, Mayen Jaymalin