MANILA, Philippines?The May 10 elections were a learning experience for Filipinos. We learned how the Commission on Elections (Comelec), wittingly or unwittingly, made things difficult for the country?s first automated national and local polls.

How to disenfranchise voters

On the eve of Election Day, I was at the Comelec to deliver an urgent letter to Comelec Chair Jose Melo. Hours earlier, I called up Ferdinand Rafanan, director of the Comelec law department, to call his attention to a statement of Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal which I thought would lead to the disenfranchisement of many voters.

Rafanan told me that he was not in a position to correct a commissioner and that I should instead fax an urgent letter to Melo. I did not just fax my letter. I went to the Comelec and had it received at the law department and at the office of Larrazabal. I also left a copy of my letter for Melo since his office was closed.

What was I complaining about? On several occasions on that day, I heard Larrazabal categorically and emphatically declare in an interview that the bringing of sample ballots inside the polling place was prohibited. His interview was aired over dzMM and shown on the news program ?TV Patrol World.?

Larrazabal?s statement went against Comelec Resolution No. 8786, Section 30 (e), which merely prohibits the ?(u)se of carbon paper, paraffin paper or other means of making a copy of the contents of the ballot? and which clearly does not include a sample ballot.

My concern was that the statement, if not corrected at once, could lead to confusion if followed by the boards of election inspectors (BEIs) and worse, disenfranchisement of many voters who would be entering the polling place without their codigos in the form of sample ballots.

In this regard, the Comelec, in anticipation of the difficulties that might be encountered by voters in an automated election, encouraged the use of codigos and many voters would be using or relying on sample ballots as their codigos. Yet, on the eve of Election Day, Larazabal announced to the entire nation that sample ballots were prohibited inside the polling place.

In my letter, I asked the Comelec to make an immediate correction of Larrazabal?s statement and to make sure that the same would be well disseminated nationwide. However, I never heard from the Comelec. Thus, I am left wondering until now how many voters were disenfranchised or were unable to vote for their chosen candidates just because of Larrazabal?s statement and the Comelec?s refusal to do something about it.

How to confuse BEIs

On the same phone conversation with Rafanan, he also mentioned, even without my asking, my earlier letter to the Comelec requesting the correction of errors in a very important resolution. This time, Rafanan said that while my observations were correct, I should have called the attention of the poll body earlier. He added that the Comelec no longer had the time to do something about my request.

What was my earlier request about? On May 7, while preparing to assist in the elections, I noticed errors in Resolution No. 8786 captioned ?Revised General Instructions for the Board of Election Inspectors on the Voting, Counting and Transmission of Results, etc.?

In a manner of speaking the resolution is the bible of the BEIs and the watchers and lawyers of candidates since it contains the guidelines and procedures on everything that takes place in the polling place. But how come that such an important document contained errors, including blatant typographical ones, when it was supposed to have been approved and signed by all the seven commissioners (three of whom are retired justices)?

In my letter, I called the attention of the Comelec on several errors in Resolution No. 8786 and requested that it correct the following:

The repeated reference to Section 34 in Section 37 (which deals with the procedure in case of shortage of ballots), directing the chair of the BEI to ?(d)o steps (c) to (d) under Section 34? or to ?observe steps (c) to (d) of Section 34,? should be corrected to read ?Section 35.?

If this error is not corrected, the chair of the BEI could end up mindlessly repeating some of the steps that are ?preliminaries to the voting? such as to ?(r)emove the sticker seal of the PCOS [precinct count optical scan] box? and ?(o)pen the PCOS box? as provided in Section 34 (c) and (d).

Section 38 (which deals with the procedure for rejected ballots), particularly Section 38 (c) i, states that in case of an invalid ballot, ?the voter shall return the ballot to the Chairman who shall proceed to Steps 4 and 5 hereof.? However, there are no Steps 4 and 5 in the provision or in any other part of the resolution. Neither is there any indication as to what are Steps 4 and 5.

Section 17 provides that ?(t)he watchers representing the dominant majority and dominant minority parties fielding candidates and the watcher of the citizens arm shall, if available, affix their signatures and thumbmarks in the election returns.?

However, Section 40 (m) provides that ?(t)he BEI shall ask the watchers present to affix their signatures to the printed ERs [election returns].? Who then should really sign the ERs?the watchers of the dominant majority and dominant minority parties as provided in Section 17 or any one of many watchers of candidates and political parties as provided in Section 40 (m)?

Section 40 (h) provides for the printing of eight copies of national returns, while Section 40 (j) provides for the printing of eight copies of local returns. Thereafter, Section 40 (dd) provides for the ?printing of 22 copies of local returns,? while Section 40 (ee) for the ?printing of 22 copies of local returns.? Section 40 (ii) then provides that ?(a)fter printing the remaining 22 copies of ERs, the members shall affix their signatures and thumbmarks to the 22 printed ERs...? It should have stopped here but it did not.

A few subparagraphs later, Section 40 (nn) again directs the BEI to ?(p)rint the remaining 22 copies of ER and other reports? and then enumerates the steps for doing so.

This means that in addition to the 30 copies of election returns that the BEIs were supposed to print, they were directed to print 22 more copies, or a total of 52 copies in all!

Was this the reason why many BEIs ran out of thermal paper?

Worse, while the Comelec said that only 30 copies of election returns would be printed and distributed, if one counts the number of copies of the election returns for distribution and posting as enumerated in Section 41 (on disposition of election returns), particularly Section 41 (a), one will arrive at a total count of 31 copies! Did this confirm the suspicion of many that the Comelec does not know how to count?

Thus, in my letter, I requested the Comelec to correct the errors to avoid confusion or delay. Again, other than what Rafanan told me, I never heard from the Comelec.

How to ensure that BEIs wouldn?t know what to do when PCOS machines conk out

As early as Jan. 21, the Comelec came out with Resolution No. 10-0021 which approved the provision of ?a supplement to the General Instructions covering continuity plans which should be in the nature of a technical document.?

However, it was only on April 30 that the Comelec came out with Resolution No. 8839 and this was published only on May 1. Understandably, with just a few days before Election Day, there was no more time to disseminate the resolution to the BEIs manning the 76,000 PCOS machines all over the country, much less, to brief them about the 25 pages of procedures outlined in the resolution.

What is Comelec Resolution No. 8839? Considering how it was treated, it would seem that it was not an important document in an automated election. But it contained the step-by-step contingency measures to be followed by the boards of canvassers and BEIs if something goes wrong during the testing of the PCOS machine, as well as during the voting, counting, transmission and canvassing, to wit:

(a) During the canvassing when there is service interruption, server hardware failure, power supply interruption, network access failure, critical weather/high temperature conditions, or sabotage or equipment robbery; and,

(b) During the conduct of elections when the BEI PIN is unavailable, when there is ballot jam, printer jam or power supply interruption (battery), when the display screen is unresponsive or there is hardware failure or damage, when the PCOS machine is unable to print the election returns, or the main memory card or iButton keys are defective, lost, stolen or destroyed, or when there is wide-area-network-access failure.

Now, do we still wonder why many BEIs did not know what to do when their PCOS machines broke down, or when they lost power supply, or when their PCOS machines could not print election returns, or when they could not have network access?

Anyhow, the BEIs did not have to worry because Smartmatic would be there in case of trouble.

In Pampanga, there was only one Smartmatic worker assigned to oversee the automated elections in the province?s 22 cities and municipalities. I had the chance to talk to him and he said that when he accepted the job, he thought that he would have at least an assistant in every city and municipality in the province.

To his dismay, he had none. So, what happened?

What the Comelec and Smartmatic claimed to be a Smartmatic worker who would be present in every polling place turned out to be a very short-term contractual employee hired by a subcontractor of Smartmatic.

Again, in Pampanga, according to the Smartmatic worker, the subcontractor was still filling up the slots of technicians a couple of days before Election Day because the technicians it initially hired had backed out.

How to let Smartmatic make a lot of savings by not having to buy more PCOS

On July 14, 2009, the Comelec issued Resolution No. 8647 which provides for the clustering of precincts. As justification for the clustering, the resolution states that ?the Commission foresees the shortage of polling places and insufficiency of appointees to the Board of Election Inspectors? and thus, ?to remedy the shortage, the Commission will have to cluster/group established precincts.?

How did the Comelec come up with the justification for the clustering that there would be shortage of polling places or insufficiency of appointees for BEI work? Did the country have fewer schools or teachers in May than it had in the 2007, 2004 and 2001 [elections]? Of course not. However, what is clear is that by clustering a maximum of five precincts with about 1,000 voters, the technology provider, in this case, Smartmatic, needed to provide only one instead of five PCOS machines.

Obviously, that resulted in tremendous savings for Smartmatic. Never mind if 1,000 Filipinos had to line up for many hours throughout that sweltering day and many under the blistering heat of the sun just to be able to vote in a small classroom.

But how many just gave up or decided not to vote after seeing the long lines? How many were disenfranchised by this clustering of precincts which served no apparent purpose other than to afford Smartmatic to make substantial savings?

(Ernesto B. Francisco Jr. served as the head of the legal team of the Liberal Party in Pampanga in the May 10 elections.)