Saturday, August 29, 2009

Automated elections should be postponed until 2013

by John Marzan

I don't trust this administration and I don't trust Arroyo's COMELEC.

Virgilio Garcillano could not have done this all alone without any help from other COMELEC operators and administration officials. Pero sabi ni Chairman Melo nung na-appoint siya para palitan si Ben Abalos na hindi raw niya papakialaman ang "Hello Garci", kaya hanggang ngayon wala pa ring napaparusahan o nakulong sa 2004 Garci presidential elections at sa 2007 Maguindanao "vote count".

In that same presscon, Chairman Melo clearly wanted to use the "computerization" of 2010 elections as a way to fix COMELEC's credibility problem and present it as the "reform" needed to move beyond Hello Garci.

But Melo got it backwards, and it is obvious he does not have any idea how the technology works or how it can be abused. Computerized voting won't make the elections more credible--just ask all the election experts around the world. It is ALWAYS about the people running the elections. By letting veteran admin and garci's lieutentants have unfettered access to the computers--cheating would become 10 times easier and faster. And almost undetectable. So any uninformed "stamp of approval" from a church group like the PPCRV on the 2010 elections won't really mean a thing.

So I am strongly in favor postponing the automated polling until 2013. By 2010, may bagong administration na (either Roxas or Villar) and the crooks that continue to remain "untouched" inside the COMELEC will no longer get any backing or protection from the Arroyo administration.

And by 2013, hopefully we'll be able to get a new COMELEC chairman that is younger and not as out of touch.

SOURCE: Philippine Commentary

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

question to all:

now that the ball-less neri has been suspended, can he still invoke the e.o. that prevents him from making his confession in senate hearings?

ini ni emi

Anna said...

Hi John,

I am personally torn between the manual and automated election systems.

Must say your arguments for a no automated elecions sound plausible.

I've got to engage brain now and think... not easy!

manuelbuencamino said...

John,

I am for manual. In addition to the reasons you pointed out, I want manual elections because I think writing out your candidate's name is more meaningful than just making ink marks in a box.

manuelbuencamino said...

John,

I am for manual. In addition to the reasons you pointed out, I want manual elections because I think writing out your candidate's name is more meaningful than just making ink marks in a box.

Deany Bocobo said...

Garci wud luv manual too.and thanks everyone for their clever help with it.

Deany Bocobo said...

Comelec cannot ever be reformed bcos it IS the manual system incarnate.it can only be obsoleted by congress providing for a new system for it to use.

Anon yymous said...

Why not hire Blackwater provide security for the machines and the polling places? Might as well get some good from their presence in Subic. And Blackwater's loyalty cannot be questioned.

Anna said...

"Garci wud luv manual too.", says Dean Jorge Bocobo.

Has it occurred to you that he's probably fallen madly in love with the proposed automated systed, makes it easy to just pull the electric plug and va da vooooom, Garci is called in to save your precious elections.

That's one possibility; another is while you are happily campaigning for automated system, he's (or Garci Jrs around) also happily developing ways and means to pull the plug from under you.

Anna said...

i.e., hack the system

john marzan said...

anna, mali yung tactic ni chiz escudero. he and other opposition candidates should call for continuation of manual elections until after 2010. for one thing, election watchdog groups like PPCRV and media eyeballs will remain useful in monitoring manual vote count and any hanky panky.

campaign on the pledge that if he gets elected, he will do an internal investigation within COMELEC to remove the rogue operators who did 2004 garci and maguindanao. (kinda like what obama's attorney general eric holder is doing now by appointing special prosecutor to look into torture cases in CIA under bush admin)

after these COMELEC scalawags (losing their "immunity" under arroyo) have been exposed in public and prosecuted, THEN we can do automated voting in 2013.

john marzan said...

anna, they don't even have to "hack the system". if it's done by the COMELEC, it's an inside job, katulad ng sinabi ni robert verzola.