“What’s keeping the poll body from running after candidates who will resort to online vote-buying in the May polls?”
This coming May midterm elections, we may yet witness more underhanded forms of cheating in the political exercise that the Commission on Elections should really ensure would be free, fair and credible.
Take the case of the reported digital vote-buying and vote-selling schemes that’s expected to be used even more openly during the campaign period in Las Piñas City.
According to the Las Piñeros Movement for Change (LPMFC), they established the non-government poll watchdog “to ensure secure, accurate, free, and fair elections by promoting peace and order, and upholding the rule of law in the city.”
Leonilo Mende, chairman of LPMFC, has sounded the alarm over recent moves by a group of women conducting a door-to-door campaign in several of the city’s barangays to gather personal information of registered voters purportedly for ‘ayuda’ and cash assistance purposes.
However, Mende said, they were dismayed to learn from residents that the women are actually supporters of a local candidate compiling a list of voters’ cellphone numbers from a database of an influential barangay official.
“The so-called database is reportedly used by the group to make it easier for them to contact voters in a specific barangay days before or during May midterm elections,” according to Mende.
Mende said voters could suddenly receive money in their e-wallets hours before election day. Then the candidate’s group may also ask for a photo of the election ballot to make sure that the residents voted for their candidate.
A concerned city resident also informed the LPMFC that the group of women promised to send P5,000 per single voter plus ayuda to be delivered to the barangay official and P20,000 for a family of voters if their name is listed in the database.
Last month, the local poll watchdog expressed support for the Comelec proposal to enforce ‘warrantless arrests’ on individuals involved in vote-buying and vote-selling during the election period.
The main target of the unidentified members of the group are mostly families in the depressed areas in the city’s District 1 and 2 who were promised a supply to five kilos of rice and groceries per week until the May elections, according to Las Piñas Councilor Mark Anthony Santos.
Santos urged the public to be vigilant and report to authorities any information on vote-buying done through online platforms.
However, since the vote-buying and vote-selling schemes are digital, the transactions are done fast and harder to trace compared to old-school vote-buying because of the privacy features of the apps.
Vote-buying schemes through electronic money transfer methods gained popularity in the 2022 polls because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now they are likely to be used more widely as more people turn to digital devices for various tasks.
Comelec Chairman George Garcia has likewise expressed alarm over election manipulation through the use of technology. Garcia highlighted a disturbing shift in vote-buying tactics, with politicians using digital wallets to transfer money to voters.
The country’s election laws were written for traditional cash handouts, not for GCash and PayMaya transactions. “If we don’t act now, digital vote-buying will become even harder to track and punish,” Garcia warned, and encouraged voters to refuse bribes from candidates, not vote for them, and report them to the Comelec.
The 1987 Constitution empowers the Comelec to “file, upon a verified complaint, or on its own initiative, petitions in court for inclusion or exclusion of voters, investigate and where appropriate, prosecute cases of violations of election laws, including acts or omissions constituting election frauds, offenses and malpractices.”
So what’s keeping the poll body from running after candidates who will resort to online vote-buying in the May polls? That we’d like to see, since the Comelec’s mandate is to ensure free, orderly, honest, peaceful and credible elections. (Email: ernhil@yahoo.com)