Vote verification is essential

The petition filed by senatorial aspirant Richard Gordon at the Supreme Court to compel the Commission on Elections to activate the voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) feature in the vote counting machines must have come as a surprise to the people who thought the 2010 and 2013 elections were conducted in accordance with the Automated Election Law.

The VVPAT enables voters to check if the ballots they cast were correctly read by the machines through a receipt that shows the names of the candidates for whom they voted.

The law states that the automated election system must have at least the “functional capability to … provide the voter a system of verification to find out whether or not the machine has registered his choice.” In spite of this mandatory requirement, however, the past leadership of the Comelec did not provide this mechanism in the 2010 and 2013 elections.

When this issue was brought up again in a congressional oversight hearing, the Comelec cited “time and motion studies” that showed printing a tape receipt would take 12 seconds, or the equivalent of two hours if there are 600 voters in a polling precinct.

The voters’ review of the receipt will add at least five hours to the voting process, or seven hours in all, thus extending the planned 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. voting hours.

How the past Comelec was able to get away with the omission of the VVPAT in two elections is a puzzler. The National Movement for Free Elections and the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting either overlooked this breach or, if they knew about it, thought it was too minor to fuss about.

Neither did it catch the attention of the joint congressional committee that the law created to monitor and evaluate automated elections every 12 months from the date of the last regular national or local elections.

The VVPAT is not an idle requirement. It is aimed at ensuring that the machines accurately read the votes cast by a voter, and the voter gets the assurance that his or her choice of candidates has been properly recorded. The fact that in the past the Comelec decided against activating this measure does not justify its continuing disregard in the May elections.

Until Congress deletes this requirement from the law, the Comelec is obliged to include it among the security features of the counting machines and inform the voters of its existence.

The Comelec cannot be faulted for expressing apprehension that the implementation of the VVPAT would slow down the voting process. But that’s a small price to pay for transparency and accuracy in the recording and canvassing of votes.

The payback for the delay, assuming it will be in the magnitude feared by the Comelec, is the voters’ assurance and confidence that their choice of candidates was correctly read and recorded. No price tag can be placed on that good feeling.

What’s more, the receipts will come in handy in the event that questions arise about the accuracy of the results of the canvass of votes.

This should not be taken to mean that the Comelec cannot be trusted to competently and efficiently supervise the May elections, and the machines to faithfully record the voters’ choice of the people they want to run the government.

But as a popular political saying goes, trust but verify.

While the men and women who will staff the precincts can be relied upon to do their duties and responsibilities with integrity, the electoral process will gain more credibility and, in the process, contribute to political stability, if all the features required by law to make it clean are implemented.

The Comelec’s concern that the receipts can be used for vote-buying and vote-selling cannot be discounted. This apprehension rests on the assumption that the voter can take hold of the receipt, bring it out of the precinct and show it to whoever offered to buy his or her vote as proof of compliance with the deal.

To counter this scheme, it has been suggested that after the receipt is reviewed by the voter, he or she will be directed to drop it in a ballot box reserved for this purpose.

The voter will not be allowed to leave the precinct unless this procedure is followed. Without a receipt, whoever offered to buy his or her vote will just have to rely on the voter’s word about the names of the candidates the latter ticked off in the ballot.

With the clock ticking for the May elections, putting in place the mechanism to make the VVPAT operational will be a challenge for the Comelec. But it has no choice because that is the requirement of the law.

The only way the Comelec can “legally” avoid implementing the VVPAT is for the Supreme Court to dismiss the petition and cite one reason or another to justify that action, similar to what it did in the case of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile when it invoked “humanitarian reasons” (a justification that is not sanctioned by law or the Constitution) to allow him to post bail in the plunder case filed against him.

If that happens, the credibility of the May elections will be put in doubt and the Automated Election Law amended by judicial fiat. No self-respecting Congress should take that form of judicial legislation sitting down.

Raul J. Palabrica ([email protected]. ph) writes a weekly column in the Business section of the Inquirer.