This was during the Joint Meeting of the Regional Development Council IX and Regional Peace and Order Council IX last June 28, 2010 at Hotel Alindahaw, Pagadian City.

COMELEC IX Regional Director Atty. Helen Aguila – Flores, represented by COMELEC Provincial Supervisor Atty. Ignacio Baya, assured on the validity and credibility of the May elections by reviewing how the process went.

Baya said that the PCOS machine used in the automated elections had physical and program security. It was physically-sealed upon its delivery to the precincts and it was program – secured because there were roughly 40 billion encrypted combinations in the program installed in the machine so that it could not be hacked by anybody.

The machine was tested and sealed; afterwards everything was set back to zero. It was re-opened only on the Election Day. Then before the voting started, the machine was “initialized to see to it that there were no other programs installed.”

He added that after the voting process, there was closing of votes, then the automatic counting and finally the transmission of the election returns (ERs). He emphasized on the point that the machine in the precinct “stood alone”, wherein it was not connected to any transmission line before the counting. It was only connected after it printed copies of ERs, which were then distributed to “concerned parties.”

Effects

Baya presented four effects of the automated elections. First was that “it eliminated delay and reduced the burden of the BEIs in spending sleepless and restless nights in appreciating and counting the votes because it was the PCOS machine that did all these things…”

Second was that “election frauds relative to appreciation, counting and tallying of votes”, were also eliminated. He said that anomalies are done in the counting and tallying of votes by mostly Board of Election personnel (BEIs) and watchers in a manual election. But these are made impossible in an automated one.

Third effect was that it “eliminated election fraud relative to transmission of election returns” from the precincts to the local Boards of Canvassers and finally to the National Board of Canvassers.

Baya said that when the ERs are transmitted in a manual election, anomalies such as reversing the results or changing the figures or numbers of votes are possible. “Yan ang nangyayari pag may pinapaboran o binabayaran ang BEIs o election personnel,” he said.

And finally, the automated election “reduced election – related violent incidents.” Baya said that in an automated election, politicians don’t need to hire private armies or goons to intimidate BEIs or election personnel because

Some of these incidents include politicians hiring private armies or goons to intimidate BEIs or election personnel, such as harassing the latter in their respective precincts and being ordered to change the results.

“Election frauds are gone not because the BEIs or election personnel did not do it but because they could not anymore do it,” Baya said.

Implications

One of the implications of an automated election that Baya presented was that “political candidates and parties will resort to other legal means of strengthening their political organizations.” This is through voters’ education wherein they help in providing knowledge to the people on the voting process.

Another is that there will be no more negotiations between the BEIs or COMELEC and political candidates to do election frauds, as well as coercion and intimidation to election personnel.

Baya concluded that although the first automated election in the country was not perfect and there were still rooms for improvement, “I believe that was the cleanest, the most honest and the most faithful election that the Philippines had in our election history.”

“An implication of this, I believe, that through automation, our people will revive their trust and confidence and renew their faith on our electoral system,” Baya added..