The election and information technology experts have called on introducing a ‘hybrid’ election system in next year’s polls instead of an automated election system (AES).
National Movement for Free Elections president and former Commission on Elections commissioner, Gus Lagman, said shifting to hybrid polls which involves manual counting and electronic canvassing would enhance the transparency and accuracy of election results.
Lagman said at the “Archer Talks” online forum that the advantage of hybrid polls is that they enhance transparency and accuracy, he said. He added, “All steps of the election process are transparent, the precinct tally is seen by the voters. In PCOS (precinct count optical scan machines), you don’t see the tally and we accept those results – nobody questions the results.”
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He said that Comelec should count the votes manually “instead of just showing us the results without us finding out how the votes were counted.” He added that the votes should be counted manually “but at the same time, there should be assistance from a person with a laptop so that as the votes are being counted, one is added to the candidate that was just read from the ballot. So, manual and laptop-assisted.” He said that while AES costs the government Php10 billion every election, the hybrid system will only cost Php300 million.
Lagman said that countries like Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands, and even some states in the United States have reverted to manual counting as the automated counting was not transparent. He, however, said that tallying time will be 5 to 10 hours longer compared to using PCOS.
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The Nelson Celis of Automated Election System Watch has said that total automation of the election process will remove transparency adding that there was still time for hybrid polls during the May 9, 2022 elections.
Rowena Guanzon, Comelec Commissioner, said the proposal to use a hybrid election system in next year’s national polls “was not feasible because the combination of manual voting and counting of votes, and automated canvassing and transmission would defeat the purpose of speedy and credible elections.”
Guanzon said the counting of votes for president and vice president done manually alone would take weeks or even a month to finish.
