The House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms has released its report on the conduct of the automated elections last May. It basically acknowledged that the use of the automated system did not result in failure of elections as predicted by many overly critical personalities but that much still needs to be done to make the system perfect.

As a staunch supporter of poll automation, I must admit I was a bit disappointed with the position taken by Committee Chairman Makati Representative Teodoro Locsin Jr. In the rather lengthy report, he basically went on to reverse his earlier support for automation. In subsequent interviews he even pointed out that he won't recommend it for future electoral exercises. My only consolation is that he at least qualified his stand by saying that he will not push for automation unless loopholes are plugged.

I would have preferred to hear Locsin giving his all out support to poll automation but then I really can't blame Locsin for having his own opinion. At least, Locsin did not go all crazy like what happened to the other Smartmatic critics out there with all their unfounded allegations.

If you're interested, here's a link to the committee report.

And here's the Inquirer.net report on Locsin's verdict:

Locsin: May polls flawed

He won’t recommend automation in 2013
By Leila B. Salaverria
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:49:00 06/29/2010

MANILA, Philippines—Makati Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. Monday admitted to being mistaken in his rosy outlook of electronic elections, saying that he was against employing the automated system used on May 10 in future electoral exercises unless loopholes were plugged.

Locsin is the chair of the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms, which on Sunday released a report based on its hearings that painted a far from ideal picture of the recently concluded automated elections.

The hearings took up the complaints of local candidates who claimed that they lost because of electoral fraud.

Interviewed over ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC), Locsin said Monday that cheating done under the automated system could be untraceable, unlike in manual elections where money and hard work could uncover a fake ballot.

Despite Locsin’s statements, others stuck to their championing of the automated election system.

Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, an active participant in the hearings of Locsin’s committee, said that none of the allegations of fraud were backed by concrete proof.

So as far as he was concerned, automation was a success unless evidence to the contrary would crop up.

“Until that would come out, I would certainly say automation was a success despite being from the opposition,” Rodriguez said in a phone interview, noting that he was a constant presence at the committee hearings, which focused on allegations of poll fraud.

He said the P7 billion spent for the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines was money well spent.

Eating own words

Locsin acknowledged that he was eating his words.

“You realize of course that I’m swallowing the words that I said over the past 12 months. I really fought for automation. Well, I’m willing to swallow my pride,” he said over ANC.

Locsin said he was mistaken when he said that the voting equipment, known as the PCOS machines, could not be manipulated.

“I would say one thing: Fortunately, a lot of people believe me and I was wrong when I was boasting that the machine cannot be rigged. There were not that many people who tried to cheat with machines but those who did knew about it, did it,” he said.

Reset PCOS to zero

Locsin said vote-rigging could have been done by resetting the PCOS machines to zero and then scanning ballots again. This was known through the explanations of Smartmatic, the technology provider of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

“They should have told me though that their machine was capable of being reset to zero. I have no idea it was that easy to do it. The reason also why none of us, including myself, ever thought about that is that the critics of automation kept focusing on other issues,” he said.

Audit logs also revealed that voting in some places began at 10 p.m., he said.

Different date

Locsin said Smartmatic’s explanation about the different date and time stamps on election returns was inadequate.

He said Smartmatic had assured him that the machine would record cheating, but then it later said that the different date and time stamps were of no moment.

If cheating was conducted, there was also active participation of the Board of Election Inspectors and the Comelec, he said.

“So I think, in the end, Director [Jose] Tolentino said it well: ‘Machines don’t cheat, it’s people who cheat and people can use the machine to cheat.’ As long as the people Comelec uses are cheaters, then they can cheat the machines,” Locsin said.

He also said cheating under automated and manual polls was very different, with manual polls providing a way to uncover concrete evidence.

“The difference between cheating in manual is that at the end of the road, if you have the money and the time, you can check whether the handwritten ballot is real or not,” he said.

Indistinguishable

“Whereas, in this kind of machine, all you have are shaded ballots. Now a shaded ballot that is falsely shaded and a shaded ballot that is genuinely shaded are indistinguishable from each other,” he added.

Locsin said that unless these concerns were addressed, he would not push for automated election in 2013.

“And my recommendation is that unless we are unable to plug all these loopholes, I would strongly discourage automated elections in 2013,” he said.

Improve transparency

Rodriguez said the same system could be used again, but with improvements for transparency added, such as projectors to show the results from the machines and the early testing of machines.

“I think we can go along with the automated system unless evidence would come out against it,” he said.

Henrietta de Villa, chair of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), also sees room for improvement in the automated polls, but she believes the 2013 elections should not revert back to manual.

“All reports from our 86 provincial coordinators said they are for the AES (automated election system) but with improvements to avoid glitches,” De Villa said.

No basis

She said there was no basis to say that there was rigged electronic cheating—that the machines were programmed to act in a malicious way.

Any shenanigan conducted could have taken place when other people stepped in to manipulate the process, she said.

De Villa lamented that 11th-hour problems in the preparations had led some to cast doubt on the integrity of the polls.

But she said that people should be wise enough to discern whether candidates’ electoral complaints were valid or not.

As we can all see, Locsin and the other personalities mentioned in that report were not at all dismissing poll automation altogether. They were merely pointing out the obvious -- that the automation of the elections in May was not perfect but that the system itself remains a viable option. The system need only be improved.

As a fan of incremental change, I have no problem with that.