MANILA, Philippines – Pushing for the manual counting of votes in election precincts, an election watchdog proposed to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) the use of webcams to guard ballots in 2016. 

Former Comelec commissioner Augusto “Gus” Lagman suggested this in a presentation on Wednesday, May 27, before Comelec’s 3 new members: Chairman Andres Bautista, Commissioner Rowena Guanzon, and Commissioner Sheriff Abas.

Representing the group TransparentElections.org.ph, Lagman said a webcam can take an image of each ballot, which will then be projected on a screen or monitor. 

This will allow the public to double-check if teachers, who serve as election inspectors, have counted the votes correctly. 

Lagman told Rappler on Thursday, May 28, that the use of webcams will address concerns that teachers might count votes erroneously if they do it manually. Lagman’s critics said factors such as exhaustion, for instance, might affect the teachers’ accuracy.

Lagman added that the Philippines can employ non-teachers, such as accountants, to help the teachers in counting votes.

He said Bautista was open to his proposal during their two-hour meeting. “The meeting was good. We’re very happy. It’s very encouraging,” the former poll official said. 

Reacting to Lagman’s proposal, Guanzon said: “It is an option but I want to learn more about it. I asked Gus if they have a time-and-motion study so we will know how long it will take to read and tabulate 800 ballots, including the time spent for lining up and voting.”

Guanzon added: “But some teachers told me they don’t want manual voting because it is slow and it is very risk for them. With automated election, they finish their work early and there is less risk of violence.”

Election lawyer George Garcia, for his part, explained that Lagman’s proposal to use webcams will not break the constitutional secrecy of the ballot. He said it is much like a teacher, serving as an election inspector, reading out a ballot’s contents in public. 

Lagman is pushing for a semi-automated election process instead of a fully automated one using precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines. 

‘Laptop count’

The semi-automated system system initially went by the name TCRES, or Transparent and Credible Election System.

Now Lagman’s group has renamed it to PATAS – a play on the Filipino word for “fair.” PATAS means Precinct Automated Tallying System. 

Under PATAS, Lagman wants the counting of votes to be manual in precincts and automated in canvassing centers. Lagman said cheating, anyway, “happens in canvassing, not in precincts.” 

A key feature of his proposed system is the use of laptops, instead of PCOS machines. 

In his proposed system, votes will be counted manually on a blackboard – the system the Philippines employed for decades until 2010. (READ: Manual poll counting? ‘We’ll return to Jurassic Park’) 

At the same time, votes will be encoded in a laptop in the voting precinct. The laptop will be connected to a projector, to allow the public to double-check the votes.

The “laptop count” will be displayed on the screen alongside each ballot image. 

Lagman said his group plans to demonstrate this process before the Comelec on June 17. 

He said if this system will be used, the Philippines will likely need around 120,000 laptops for the 2016 elections. A whole set of paraphernalia under his system – including a laptop, printer, and projector – will likely cost P20,000 to P25,000 each ($448 to $560).

This comes as the Comelec faces a major crisis: a Supreme Court ruling that might render more than 81,000 PCOS machines useless. 

Bautista said the Comelec will choose between two tracks: to repair and supplement its existing vote-counting machines, or to buy 100,000 new ones for the Philippines’ presidential elections in 2016.

Still, he said the poll body is open to alternatives. – Rappler.com

*US$1 = P44.59

Image of webcam from Shutterstock