Tally voter receipts to check if machines counted right

Before becoming election commissioner, computer expert Nelson Celis had a novel proposal for Election 2022:

Manually tally the voter receipts against the machine count. That would show if the machine read the ballots right and transmitted the true precinct result.

Manong Nelson wrote about it in his Manila Times weekly column. He told me how it can be done fast, say, by limiting the tally to presidential, VP, senatorial and party-list races.

Manong Nelson knows electronic voting like the back of his hand. As Philippine Computer Society president and bank cybersecurity specialist, he helped draft the 2007 Automated Election System Law.

When Comelec picked Venezuelan Smartmatic over more qualified voting machine makers, he cofounded the critical AES Watch. He exposed flaws in Elections 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 and 2022, then was appointed to Comelec in August 2022.

The AES Law requires issuance of voter-verified paper audit trail. Smartmatic did so only in 2016 because compelled by the Supreme Court.

This Election 2025, poll watchdog Namfrel will implement Manong Nelson’s proposed VVPAT tally, but on a very limited scale. The National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections no longer has the hundreds of thousands of volunteers it mustered in the 1980s.

Comelec and Namfrel chairman Angel Averia Jr. agreed to tally 10 precinct clusters each in Metro Manila, Northern Luzon, Southern Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao and Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. That’s only 6.43 percent of the total 93,287 clustered precincts.

It’s like a random manual audit, but done on E-Day, not one week later, Manong Nelson texted.

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Former DICT secretary Eliseo Rio has a better plan. In an open letter to Comelec, he and former Financial Executives Institute president Edwin Fernandez proposed:

(1) No automated counting machine should be connected to the internet public or private network via modem before printing election results, as elucidated by Atty. Harold Respicio.

(2) All accredited precinct poll watchers and watchdogs should be allowed to take photos of all the VVPATs after election returns are transmitted.

Rio and Fernandez expounded: “These two procedures will not entail additional cost or time for Comelec. Sanctity of the ballots will not be compromised because there is no way of knowing to whom a VVPAT belongs after transmission of ERs.

“Votes reflected in VVPATs can then be independently counted at a later time, and compared with the transmitted ERs. Any discrepancy can be a basis for an electoral protest.

“These two simple procedures can be implemented by May 12 via a Comelec General Instruction. This will make election clean and honest.

“Photographing of VVPATs can be done while the teacher members of the precinct Electoral Board are performing final administrative matters like printing more copies of ERs, which takes another two hours after transmission.

“Photographing can be quickened by grouping the VVPATs into batches corresponding to the number of watchers present, who after taking pictures of their assigned batch will share these with the others.”

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Re-electionist mayor Joel Ruma of Rizal, Cagayan was assassinated the other night while campaigning. Two companions were wounded. Police are determining how many gunmen there were.

That latest spark of election violence was not yet in Comelec’s recent report. The poll body recorded 46 election-related shootings from Jan. 12 to April 11, a month before May 12 E-Day. That’s one incident every two days.

The election period began on Jan. 12, and campaign on Feb. 11. Expect more brutalities as rivalries overboil in the next 17 days.

Most of those gunned down were in BARMM. That’s despite the postponement of its regional parliamentary balloting to October.

On Feb. 24, ambushers wounded vice mayor Omar Samama of Datu Piang, Maguindanao del Sur. But missed his father Mayor Victor Samama.

On March 21 in San Rafael, Bulacan gunmen slew Bryan Villaflor, his girlfriend and his bodyguard in their SUV. Villaflor was the information officer of Bulacan 3rd District Rep. Lorna Silverio and her son Victor Silverio, who is running to replace her.

Police said indiscriminate fire wounded passengers of a jitney, a tricycle and a car. It happened in broad daylight so close to Metro Manila.

On April 10 someone in the crowd fired at mayoral aspirant Kerwin Espinosa in Albuera, Leyte. A self-confessed narco-trader, Espinosa blamed seven cops from adjacent Ormoc City, supposedly sent by a rival coalition. Paraffin-tested, the cops were negative for gunpowder burns.

Local elections are savage. Opponents, sometimes related, take things personally.

But there’s more at stake than ego. Losing a provincial, district, city or municipal post can mean losing political-economic clout.

Politics is dirty business. It usually means family monopoly of the locale’s sea and air transport, tourist resorts, gas stations, hardware stores, malls, cinema houses, nightclubs.

In Albuera, Espinosa is trying to regain the seat of his late father mayor Rolando Espinosa. During Rody Duterte’s presidency, town police chief Jovie Espenido claimed that “the Espinosas controlled everything.”

In Bulacan, Silverio reportedly is up against a party of cigarette smugglers, illegal gambling operators and money launderers.

Aside from business control, there’s the 70-percent kickback of officials from road and flood works. The loot can run to billions of pesos a year.

Aside from actual attacks, data analyst Vote Report PH recorded 577 cases of red-tagging. The prohibited act incites violence on left-leaning candidates. Red-tagging was 78.72 percent of 733 illegalities that include falsification and discrimination, said Prof. Danny Arao of poll watchdog Kontra Daya.

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