Sinister plot

In our digital world today machines are configured to predict the intentions of a user through patterns of their choices. It is amazing how, when I browse through my Facebook feed, it shows different advertisements that are in line with my interests or my last search.

Of course, despite the complexities of artificial intelligence, programs cannot fully predict your intentions or your interests. This system is not an entirely new concept. Let’s turn back time to the May 10, 2010 elections, a system like this was used to decide the fate of our country and our democracy.

It was the first time when the Philippines had its experience with modernization of our country’s manual system of elections. By virtue of Republic Act (RA) 8436, subsequently amended by RA 9369, our country had its maiden application and use of automated election system.

Doing away with decades-old use of the manual voting and canvassing of election results, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) implemented initial attempts to modernize our election system. After hurdling technical and legal challenges, the Comelec awarded to a Venezuela-based company called Smartmatic Inc. the government’s contract to supply and initially help operate the so-called Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) which are machines that read votes based on pencil markings on a special type of paper.

When I went inside our local public school, I intended to vote for certain candidates on the printed ballot. In order to show my intention and my choice, I had to shade the oval beside the name of my preferred candidate.

Once done, we all had to go through the anxiety ridden experience of inserting our ballot in the much debated vote counting machine, waiting for a few seconds to find out if we’ve done our civic duty of placing our vote for the country’s next set of leaders.

For the first time in our country’s history of presidential elections, we had the results at the earliest possible time and all the losing candidates conceded without filing any election protest. It was a welcome change from many years of manual voting and canvassing system where losing candidates always challenged the results by filing election protests before the Comelec all the way to the Supreme Court (SC).

Just like in social media where it extrapolates our interest through what we physically like or search, the vote counting machine extrapolates our choice or intended vote through our physical act of shading. This system has its flaws such as shading too lightly or not filling in the prescribed oval.

That is why Comelec prescribed a minimum level of shading to make the reading more accurate. In the 2010 presidential elections, level was set at 50 percent – meaning one should shade at least 50 percent of the oval for their votes to be cast.

In the 2016 elections, this was reduced to 25 percent – meaning less shading is needed for your vote to be read. In theory, this was a welcome development because that means the vote counting machine needed less to read the vote of every Filipino choosing their leaders.

In the past few weeks, reports have surfaced putting into light this shading system. In the on-going recount of the Vice Presidential elections, the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) ruled that only votes which ovals were shaded 50 percent and above would be counted. This means that it will take more ink for a vote to be counted in the recount than during the actual elections.

The increase in the threshold of shading means that a Filipino, who breathed a sigh of relief after seeing that the vote counting machine was able to read their vote, might have that moment reversed.

This means that a lot of votes initially accepted would now be rejected. In the overall scheme of things, this would naturally create a disparity between the tally during election day and the tally during the recount. 

This is a very alarming development in the on-going electoral recount case before the PET.

Reports further show that the votes for Vice President Leni Robredo have been exponentially decreasing because the pilot provinces of the recount were her bailiwicks in the on-going PET recount petition by losing VP candidate, ex- Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. Logically, the more votes you have in an area the more chance there maybe votes that do not meet the 50 percent threshold.

This equates to a large number, hundreds if not thousands, of Filipinos are being disenfranchised for every ballot box the PET opens. 

The most alarming aspect to these events is how it is turning back the clock for the country and for every Filipino voter. Remember how in 1986 elections when the votes of the late president Ferdinand Marcos exponentially rose and votes of his chief rival presidential candidate Corazon “Cory” Aquino exponentially decreased because of tampering in computer tabulations.

Our country’s first-ever foray with the computerized voting system was tested in the May 2010 presidential elections. It produced a winner who thus earned the title as the first PCOS-elected president Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III.

Aquino’s losing VP runningmate, former Sen. Mar Roxas II contested before the PET the victory over him by erstwhile Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay. Roxas, who asked the PET for recount of the so-called “null” votes for the VP race to his favor, however, did not pursue further his protest.

Another form of human intervention of hacking posed more sinister threat to our computerized election machines. The Comelec decided to drop the PCOS term and used instead vote counting machines, or VCMs during the May 2016 presidential polls. 

Today, this might be the other way around. Instead of machines rigging the elections, it is man-made decisions. Like in 1986, the Marcos regime apparatus systematically disenfranchised the Filipino voter to reach a political position.

The silver lining to this is that in 1986 the people did not accept disenfranchisement. I hope that history, in a way, will repeat itself and people will not accept another sinister plot of stealing our constitutionally protected right of suffrage.