The public nature of elections

We know a little bit more about the Smartmatic-PCOS — Comelec collusion since the recent testing of the machines. There were good and well-meaning people who went along with the testing exercise hoping that Comelec was sincere when it said “there was nothing wrong with the machines,” adding that critics were just whiners who knew nothing about computer technology.

In other words, Comelec will not admit to flaws in the Smartmatic-PCOS automated system even when the flaws were happening before the audience’s eyes.

The electoral body that has the mandate to make sure elections are transparent is determined to hide behind the obscurity of computer technology. It is the perfect excuse because voters are not computer experts. You don’t know how it operates therefore stop whining.

Moreover if you critics don’t stop whining we will just go back to manual. That is a funny threat, as if we had any choice. He said earlier that if we go back to manual he would resign. Today he says if we continue to whine, we may just have to go back to manual (forgetting his earlier threat to resign).

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Comelec’s attitude has opened another battlefront and this time it is not about defects or glitches with the machines but the entire idea of a machinated election.

To this column that is more serious. A machinated election that is not understood by ordinary voters contradicts the “public nature of elections.”

It means that by agreeing to it, the sovereignty of the people has been subverted. It is true not only here but also in other countries that experimented with automated elections. We had rushed too soon to adopt the system because of the imperfections of manual elections only to fall into an even more vicious political monster.

We can learn from an advocacy group called We the People’s Foundation in the US. It has been fighting for a return to manual elections.

“There is an essential principle of Freedom underlying the Constitution for the United States of America and its imperative oversight by We the People: It’s the principle of the public nature of America’s elections.

Without this principle, neither Liberty nor a democratic Republic can exist.

The principle of the public nature of elections requires every major step of the election process be conducted in public and subject to public examination that is, “known by, or open to the knowledge of, all or most people” (Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary, Second Edition).

Germany’s Federal Court said pretty much the same thing. “The use of electronic voting machines requires that the essential steps of the voting and of the determination of the result can be examined by the citizen reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject.

This requirement results from the principle of the public nature of elections.”

Voting and counting by machines are in effect conducted in secret programmed machines.

“Again, computerized voting machines both record and count your votes, in secret using hidden, electronic devices and enigmatic, corporate-authored software algorithms, not subject to either public observation or examination.”

It compares counting votes through mechanical and electronic machines as no different from an election where all the ballots cast are gathered and quickly moved to a secret place to be counted.

We would not tolerate that but that is what happens in the automated elections system.

We the People asks if Americans should silently permit an unholy alliance of state election officials, voting machine vendors and transnational media corporations to seize the very foundation of America’s democratic system of representative government?

Are We the People to stand quietly aside as state officials and even the federal Judiciary attempt to deny us these Fundamental Rights?

The same questions could and should be asked in the Philippines with Philippine elections taken over by Smartmatic-PCOS.

Let us remove the veil that hides this basic principle with the swan song that there is no cheating in automated elections. On the contrary, the cheating could be so comprehensive there is no way for citizens to object once it has been set up which is what Comelec under Brillantes seems to want to do. He wants to go ahead regardless of complaints because when it is done, there will be no recourse. It will be a fait accompli. That was what happened in 2010 but evidence that has been ignored has now reached the mainstream (thanks to CBCP support).

If Brillantes says that former Comelec commissioner Gus Lagman, a computer expert who stayed only 10 months in Comelec and therefore does not know the system, what does it imply for the rest of us who do not understand computer technical language?

We have also contributed to the confusion by accepting that “since we do not know much about computer technology we should not insist there was fraud in 2010 and there will be fraud in 2013.” This is a cowardly position for the sovereign people.

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Therefore with all due respect to computer expert Hermegildo Estrella who gave some very good pointers on what to watch for come May 2013, I think it is an exercise in futility.

He goes through the minutiae of what to watch for like — “Did you get a printed tape that showed the candidates you voted? Or did you see such list in the screen on the right side of the PCOS machine? Or were the words “Thank you. You have voted!” only shown on this screen?

Did the BEI or Comelec rep during the test tried or deliberately put a “fake” ballot to check whether the PCOS will really NOT READ and REJECT such a fake ballot?

Did you check whether the three BEIs in the precinct really have their own digital signatures? Were these digital signatures used or applied before sending the election results to the canvassing centers?

After the reading of the votes, and the printing of the election returns, was there a check and comparison of the printed election result and a MANUAL count of the actual ballots read by the PCOS? If there was no such comparison, how would you know that the PCOS counts were the same as those truly reflected in the actual ballots?

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We should now ask the question whether it is better to have elections or not at all. To my mind we should have elections because there is a danger that the sitting government will use it as an excuse to stay indefinitely until a solution is reached. Think of that.