A SENATORIAL candidate this week asked the Supreme Court to compel the Commission on Elections to restore the security measures that the poll body had decided to remove from the automated election system.
In his petition, former Senator Richard Gordon argued that the Comelec’s decision to scrap printed receipts for voters disregarded the required security features set out under the Automated Elections System Law, which he helped write when he was in Congress.
The seven Comelec commissioners earlier decided to scrap the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail, saying it could be used as a tool for vote buying and also make the voting process longer.
In defending the poll body’s decision, Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista said voters could use the printed receipts to prove how they voted so they could more easily collect from vote buyers. He also said printing receipts for voters could add from five to seven hours to the election period on May 9.
But Gordon argues that Section 6 of Republic Act No. 9369 lists a voter verified paper trail as among the minimum system capabilities required in an automated election system.
As such, he says, this is not an optional feature but a mandatory one. Thus, the Comelec may not opt to turn the feature off, regardless of its reasons.
Sadly, this is not the first time the Comelec has played fast and loose with the law.
In previous elections, it also did away with the source code review required by law.
The Comelec chairman who preceded Bautista also violated provisions of the procurement law by granting a P268-million contract to a favored service provider to diagnose and repair 80,000 vote-counting machines without the benefit of a public bidding.
In that instance, the Supreme Court said the Comelec failed to justify its resorting to a negotiated contract and struck down the deal.
Similarly, the Court should strike down the Comelec’s decision to deactivate the paper audit trail, a key security requirement under the law.
The decision is even more critical as the nation heads toward a close election, and when public confidence in the election system is not particularly high.
The Gordon petition comes as a new survey showed that only half of Filipinos (49 percent) expect the May elections to be clean because the counting of votes is automated. The balance were either undecided or believed that automation would not make the elections credible.
On a separate question, a sizable plurality (39 percent) in the Pulse Asia survey said they expect cheating to take place. Significantly, 37 percent of those who expected cheating said it would come in the form of tampering with the vote-counting machines.
Given the already low confidence in the election system and the tightness of the race, the Comelec has chosen a particularly perilous time to continue playing fast and loose with the law.