Comelec bucks hybrid poll system; solon calls it ‘palpak’

THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) thumbed down the proposed hybrid elections system for the 2016 elections, prompting one lawmaker to call the alternative voting system “palpak.”

During the hearing of the House of Representatives suffrage and electoral reforms committee on Thursday, senior commissioner Christian Robert Lim presented to lawmakers the Comelec report on the mock elections held at Bacoor, Cavite on June 27 using the precinct automated tallying system (Patas) being pushed by former Comelec commissioner Gus Lagman.

Under the hybrid system, voting and counting of votes would be done manually while transmission and canvassing of ballots would be automated.

The system would use laptops and projectors during the tallying of votes. During the counting, the votes would be tallied simultaneously in a laptop and shown on a projector screen. Afterwards, the results would be transmitted electronically to a quick-count server system.

“We advise not to use the Patas system on the following reasons: Patas will cost more compared to our Optical Mark Reader (OMR) system…will require amendment of existing laws to allow it… time consuming and prone to human error… and still needs to be developed,” Lim said in his presentation.

Lim also said there is lack of transparency in the tallying of votes because during the mock polls, what was seen on the laptop’s monitor was different from what was displayed on the projector screen.

He said the procedure of manually counting the ballots – president first, followed by vice president, senators, district and party-list representatives – “opens up the opportunity to tamper with the ballots three times aside from prolonging the counting.”

He added that the tallying of the votes is time consuming. He said during the mock polls, it took 41 minutes to count 20 ballots for national  positions only.

Lim said Patas is susceptible to human error because the laptop would be operated by a person who might succumb to fatigue during the canvassing system.

“Patas’ manual procedures are taxing, time consuming and prone to errors,” Lim said.

He said it is also more expensive. To compensate for the slow counting of votes, the number of clustered precincts would need to be increased to lessen the number of voters per precincts, “increasing the logical and budgetary requirements in the process.”

The commissioner said based on the commission’s calculations, the Patas would cost P36.8 billion to P39.7 billion, higher than the budget earmarked for the automated elections system (AES) at P20.5 billion.

Lim also posed legal challenges, saying the Patas has no legal basis.

He added that the elections management system and the canvassing and consolidation system under Patas “are still to be developed, and development and readying of these systems will take at least one year,” he said.

Lim also lamented that during the mock polls, the votes were electronically transmitted using SMS, which he said is prone to spamming and intercepting.

Lim’s presentation prompted Caloocan Rep. Edgar Erice to blow his top and deride the alternative elections system as “palpak.”

“The Patas system is amateurish, ill-prepared, palpak and a waste of time,” Erice said.

He said the Comelec wasted its time giving time for the Patas’ proponents to demonstrate their alternative system of voting and canvassing.

Panel chairman Capiz Rep. Fredenil Castro still gave Patas’ proponents credit where it is due.

“This is not the end for the Patas. Perhaps for the future elections and future generations of this country you may continue to improve this system,” Castro said.

For her part, Maricor Akol from the AES Watch defended the hybrid system which her group had proposed.

She said the system was more transparent compared to the optical mark reader Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines, because voters get to see the voting and the canvassing in the tally board.

She said what is not transparent in the automated elections using the PCOS is that the “machine controls the elections.”

“Of course it’s more tedious, but we will have transparency and what the people voted for are the ones reflected in the election returns,” Akol said.

Akol added that they used SMS to transmit election returns because there might be jammers during the mock polls.

Akol said the tallying of votes under the hybrid system can only take two minutes for all the candidates per ballot.

“What we’re saying is we wanted a transparent election, where what the people voted is what is counted on the board.

The manual system can never compare in speed with the PCOS system but the PCOS system was never transparent in 2010 and 2013,” Akol said.