Date: January 10, 2003

Publication: Manila Standard

Title: Not for Public Consumption

Author: Jullie Yap-Daza

While the elected, the aspiring and the unelectable are in a dither over the probabilities of Charter Change, a small group of private citizens is trying to whip up public opinion to call for an overhaul of the system of registering voters and counting ballots.

What use is changing the Constitution if the most potent tool of democracy—free elections—is flawed with holes and loopholes that make the institution look like a fishing net?

The process of registering voters and empowering them to cast their ballots, after which those ballots are moved from the precinct to the final tabulation with the imprimatur of the Commission on Elections, has been so twisted, distorted by use and abuse across countless political regimes, that elections have become a joke, a mockery, a shame, a frustration, an exercise in futility, a monster with two faces that keeps devouring its own children.

And we keep paying the price.

Now we are talking of changing the form of government, of changing the Constitution, of modernizing Comelec, without thinking of going to the basics first.

First, give the people a chance to participate in an election where they will be proud of themselves. Give them a straight and honest method of voting and counting their votes.

***                                                                                          

A bunch of computer experts has devised one such method, but simply because it guarantees a fair election without gargantuan sums of unnecessary expenses involved, they are getting nowhere.

The few groups they have demonstrated their method to are enthused by the plain, uncomplicated technology of it all. This means, no need for plastic ID cards where some wily businessman with friends in the Comelec and elsewhere stand to earn oodles and oodles of money. It means the use of computers hooked up to a nationwide grid of efficiency and transparency, where voters will be identified by name, thumbmark, and picture on the ID screen. The picture of the voter’s face is “live,” i.e., it is not a print of a photograph taken last month, but a mirror-image registering on the screen as the voter faces the computer to cast his vote.

As the ballot does not come in the form of paper, we will be saving taxpayers’ money from going to some favored paper supplier. Instead, the voter will be voting on the screen, touch system.

And where will the computers come from? No need to spend billions on the purchase, the experts know where to rent them, cheap. Even better, the machines don’t have to be state-of-the-art. Old models will do very nicely, thank you. That’s how friendly they are, so friendly, in fact, that they could be donated to public schools after election day 2004.

***

If this sounds like a dream, it can only be because we have so long been cheated by our fellowmen that we refuse to recognize a good thing when we see it. Accustomed to the way the wool has been pulled over our eyes election after “honest, orderly and free election” but knowing that we got only the opposite, can we help being cynical?

If the technology is guaranteed straight (as opposed to crooked) and fair (as opposed to favoring the bad-rich and bad-powerful), how come no one you know knows about it yet?

I’ll tell you why. The experts respect their work. For now, they’re guarding it like a precious secret, before it takes the country by storm. They’re only showing it to people they trust. A few Comelec officials were approached for a demo, but their comment afterward was not to comment with enthusiasm.

What the Mega Group of Computer Companies wants is for a groundswell to build up from the voters, not the crooked politicians and government officials who’ll know their goose is cooked once this method is adopted for the millennium, for the good of the people for the rest of the millennium.

For now, as the din of politics grows louder, a few people close to the group worry that the wiseguys behind the project could be targeted for an early rubout. Evil men have killed for more petty reasons. Evil men have robbed us of our voice in choosing our leaders. Evil men will do it again in 2004, 2007, 2010 and beyond. No one can stop them but an army of machines programmed to work without fear or favor, to deliver results without succumbing to temptation or emotion.

I can only wish the project proponents good health and good luck. Their loss will be ours—but first, we should let Comelec tell us why the’re not interested.