A speedy, credible vote

Canadians went to the polls yesterday for their 42nd general elections, and proclaimed a new prime minister a few hours after the voting centers closed.

Filipinos can only watch with envy the speed and efficiency of the Canadian vote, where no one complained of being cheated and where not a single candidate was shot dead. The consequent regime change was just as quick, peaceful and efficient: Canada installed a new prime minister, who beat the incumbent. A high voter turnout of 68 percent swept challenger Justin Trudeau to power in an impressive comeback for his Liberal Party.

The reaction of the loser was just as enviable in our country where no one concedes defeat. “The people are never wrong,” ex-prime minister Stephen Harper of the Conservatives said. “The disappointment is my responsibility and mine alone.”

No finger-pointing, no recriminations.

As in several other members of the Commonwealth, the vote was cast manually – using good old-fashioned pen and paper, as Canadian Ambassador Neil Reeder pointed out to me. The votes were entered into computers in 65,000 polling stations, tallied and forwarded to centers where the final outcomes were announced.

I asked if cheating was possible. The ambassador said this would be extraordinarily difficult, considering that the political parties and candidates had vote monitors in every polling center.

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Proponents of a shift to a unicameral system in the Philippines can add a quicker vote to the reasons for their advocacy. The speedy vote in Canada is partly due to the fact that only members of parliament were up for elections, with 17,546,697 out of about 26.4 million citizens voting. About 3.6 million cast their ballots in advance voting over the Thanksgiving weekend (in Canada, the holiday is celebrated every second Monday of October).

In contrast, each Pinoy voter will have to pick in May 2016 a president, vice president, 12 senators, a congressman, a party-list group, a mayor, vice mayor and councilors. Outside Metro Manila, voters must also pick a governor, vice governor and several provincial board councilors and, in the case of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, 24 assemblymen.

Even if the names are provided in the ballot and voters simply shade the circles beside the names, the process will still take longer than the Canada vote. And counting the votes cast for each position will take even longer. If we get the usual average turnout of 80 percent out of 53,786,223 registered voters, that’s still more than double the number of Canadians who cast their ballots.

Still, if other countries can announce the results of parliamentary elections within two hours after the precincts close, it shouldn’t take two days for Filipinos to learn the results in the national races for president, vice president and 12 Senate seats. The results for local races should be known even faster.

Canada isn’t the only country that uses a combination of old-fashioned manual voting and regular computers for vote tallying. The UK and New Zealand have the same voting system, with the results known as quickly as the Canada vote, followed by the same speedy regime change.

It is the most practical and least expensive voting system, with the results easy to countercheck in case of electoral protests.

The Canada vote required 105,140 ballot boxes, 80 truckloads of election materials, 8,000 telephone lines, 5,000 computers, 340 servers, and 244,377 voting pencils (laid end to end, they would stretch 18.5 kilometers long). I’m sure the computers, servers and phone lines would still be infinitely cheaper than the Precinct Count Optical Scan machines, which cost us over P1 billion in 2010, and the PCOS incarnation for 2016, the Optical Mark Reader or OMR.

But we all know this kind of voting system is best supported by a strong, functioning democracy – which is not the case in our country. From ghost voters to vote buying, dagdag-bawas (vote padding and shaving) and ballot snatching to the alleged “hocus-PCOS,” we have elevated election fraud to an art.

If none of that works, there’s always good old-fashioned murder to eliminate political rivals. Who needs capital punishment, which requires decades of court trial before it can be carried out?

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It’s a different society so we can only say “wish ko lang” in watching the Canada vote. But perhaps we can be inspired by Canada’s regulation of campaign finance.

Canada’s “Political Financing Handbook for Candidates and Official Agents” lists detailed election expense limits for candidates in each of the 338 electoral districts, right down to centavos.

The handbook, based on election laws, clearly defines ways of raising funds for political campaigns, specifies periods for fund-raising (with different limits for amounts), and sets guidelines even for obtaining loans to finance a campaign. All loans, including interest rates, as well as anonymous contributions of $20 or lower, ticketed fundraisers, auctions and draws, sponsorship or advertising, and fund transfers within the party must be declared in a detailed report on contributions and expenditures.

Other “cash inflows” must also be declared in detail. Candidates are restricted from accepting “gifts or other advantage,” defined as “money, property or services provided without charge or at less than commercial value.”

Every candidate is required to submit, within four months from election day, a “Statement of Gifts or Other Advantages Received” from any single entity exceeding $500 in value. The document is confidential, except if needed for “enforcement purposes.” Exempted are gifts from “relatives” – defined as someone related to the candidate “by marriage, common-law partnership, birth, adoption or affinity.”

A “common-law partnership” exists between two persons “who are cohabiting in a conjugal relationship that has lasted for at least one year.” This is useful in our land where many politicians maintain several mistresses.

Pinoy politicians have strongly resisted any effort to regulate campaign finance, which is a source of substantial personal fortunes. Election finance has become a perfect tool for money laundering and racketeering on a grand scale.

But perhaps other politicians will see election finance regulation from a practical viewpoint: it can make campaigns substantially cheaper and reduce the reasons for making unpalatable political compromises.

Other democracies have been holding honest, orderly and peaceful elections or HOPE for decades. We have coined an acronym for it, and we can all work to ensure that it doesn’t remain in the realm of wish ko lang.