ELECTION FRAUD?

Reports of fraud during the elections have been surfacing lately. The most recent one is from a masked whistleblower who claims to be a Comelec employee and one of the players of the alleged cheating. But so far, no one has presented any conclusive evidence yet. I would love to see this issue either proved or disproved. Either way, it will give us good lessons and warnings so the next election will be a better one. I am hoping it isn't true, but sadly, I can't discount the fact that the allegations could be true. Before I go explaining why, allow me to take you back to the election process.

1. When it's your turn to vote, you will be asked to sign and fingerprint your name in the voters' logbook. A ballot with number corresponding to yours is then given for you to fill up.
2. You then fill up the ballot to cast your votes.
3. When you have completed your markings, you will be asked by the BEI to feed your ballot into the machine.
4. The machine will read your ballot and 'Congratulations!' will appear on the screen, a signal that the reading was a success.
5. After all in the precinct have voted, the machine-tallied results will be transmitted to the server. The final tally can be printed out for whatever purpose it may serve the BEI and Comelec.

Now, let's find loopholes where cheating can be inserted into the process. First, each voter has a corresponding ballot number. Meaning, the BEI can't give a voter just any ballot, it has to be the ballot assigned to the voter by the Comelec. Your signature and fingerprint in the logbook is the only proof that you're really the person who voted in your name and not someone else. This is a loophole because, in the first place, the Comelec didn't educate the voters regarding the ballot number system. I, for one, didn't even bother to check if I had the right ballot because I didn't know that there was a way to check it. Another loophole is that we weren't made to sign and fingerprint on the ballot itself and thus anyone with the means could easily print a duplicate ballot, mark a different set of candidates, load it into a machine, then transmit the fake votes rather than the authentic ones. To prevent his, voters should be made to sign and fingerprint the ballots and the machines should be able to read and identify fingerprints.

Second, there's no time stamps/marks for each vote. This is a loophole because transmission to the server is done after all votes in the precinct have been cast (some precincts even took days to transmit). If there's no time stamp, it's so easy for the culprit to invalidate the previous votes, then load the fake ballots into the machine before transmission. Machines should be able to time stamp each vote to make it very difficult for the culprit to commit fraud because he would have to feed the fake ballots at the exact time the real voter had voted in order to cover his tracks.

Third, the program which dictates the machine how to read votes is in the memory or CF cards which are so easy to access and so easy to replace. It would have been more appropriate if the program was installed somewhere inside the machine that is difficult to access, and even more difficult to replace.

Fourth, as stated above, it's all in the program. Meaning, the outcome of the elections is programmable. It's that easy. There's no other remedy to this, actually, but only honest, trustworthy Comelec officials and BEIs.

I'd like to believe there wasn't cheating involved but I won't be surprised if there will be soon because humans are more intelligent than machines and we always find ways to beat the system. In the meantime, a toast to what I consider the cleanest election in the history of the Philippines. The only apparent fraud I was able to witness and observe was rampant vote buying...but that's another story in my blog.