The Optical Mark Reader (OMR) that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will use for the automated elections system (AES) in the May 2010 polls has not been fully proven as tamper- and fraud-free, will encourage wholesale cheating, and will not ensure a transparent and open election system.
BY THE CENTER FOR PEOPLE EMPOWERMENT IN GOVERNANCE
Posted by Bulatlat
The Optical Mark Reader (OMR) that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will use for the automated elections system (AES) in the May 2010 polls has not been fully proven as tamper- and fraud-free, will encourage wholesale cheating, and will not ensure a transparent and open election system.
Moreover, it is doubtful whether Comelec will be ready for the full automation of the elections given the time constraints based on its own calendar.
At a time when many Filipino voters are losing trust in the country’s electoral process, what we need in order to bring trust and credibility to this political exercise is a transparent and open election system, where people will have access to election information. It is in this regard that we call on the Comelec to look into the Open Election System (OES) once more because, among other advantages, its component of installing a public website where election data will be posted and is accessible for public viewing will ensure a transparent and open election.
Aside from being cheaper (P4 billion) than the OMR, OES has the technological potential to deliver election results in 3-5 days.
On the other hand, we are concerned that the use of the OMR will only bring wholesale high-tech cheating and will not guarantee a fraud- or tamper-free election based on multifold studies and reports with regard to its performance in the August 2008 Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) elections – where at most, more than 20 problems and deficiencies were observed – as well as in the United States and other countries where OMR was used in elections. In fact, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) – the largest educational and scientific computing society in the U.S. – adopted a resolution in 2004 calling for a “voter-verifiable audit trail” after finding election machines being “inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering.”
Why is it that the Comelec has not been transparent in revealing the full report of its advisory council on the August 2008 ARMM automated elections where, aside from the machine errors and deficiencies, it admitted that the poll body has inadequate IT apparatus to meet the complex requirements of AES?
