COTABATO CITY, Philippines—The conduct of manual balloting and vote counting instead of automated elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao could be dangerous, the regional chair of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting said Thursday.
The Commission on Elections said earlier this week it had run out of time to prepare for automated elections as it put off signing the necessary contracts in light of moves in Congress— instigated by the Aquino administration—to defer the ARMM elections until May 2013.
Father David Procalla said the possibility of violence, cheating and other forms of electoral fraud taking place would be high in case of manual balloting and vote-counting as planned by the Comelec.
“Manual elections are predictable, difficult to manage and dangerous,” he said.
Procalla said he could not understand why Comelec has to return to manual balloting when the automated process has already been tested to work well during the past three elections.
“Last year’s automated election was very peaceful and orderly in the ARMM area,” he said.
Procalla said that while the PPCRV and its partner organizations were willing to resume poll duties in Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi for the August elections, it was hoping that the Comelec would change its mind and use anew the PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scan) machines “because they were proven to be effective tools against cheating and other electoral fraud.”
“This early, I could imagine the long days in the counting of votes, court battles over counting venues and eruption of violence,” Procalla said.
In manual elections, he said, teachers and other stakeholders will be exhausted and the outcome may not necessarily be the desire of the electorate.
“Remember that the manual election in Maguindanao and in ARMM a few years back, there were shootings, bombings, ballot snatching, burning of schools, etc., and we do not want that to happen again,” he said.
Procalla said the Comelec has enough time left for the conduct of automated regional elections.
Comelec chair Sixto Brillantes told the Senate committee hearing on the planned ARMM election postponement that it would have reverted back to manual election unless the issue (postponement of ARMM polls) is settled by June 15.
He said the Comelec did not hold any public bidding for the use of PCOS machines or the printing of special ballots because it feared that Congress would postpone the elections and it did not want to waste millions of pesos in taxpayer money.