YPS

Live blog from the Come Elect! National Conference of the Ateneo School of Governance and the Transparency and Accountability Network : Ensuring Successful Automation in 2010.

A word I’ve heard a lot this morning is “black box”. Whether we are talking about the actual black PCOS machine or the lack of information about automated elections, we are at the moment indeed confronted by a BLACK BOX. To steal a quote from the presentation of Vince Lazatin of TAN: “How can observers assess the workings of electronic systems where the process of vote counting and tabulation are often invisible” – The Carter Center, 2007

Vince Lazatin presented a diagram of “Automation in Theory”. In an ideal situation, the diagram illustrates the general process flow of automated elections. COMELEC Executive Director Jose Tolentino further enumerated the steps of the actual voting process and showed an image of the actual ballot. These steps should be indelibly (pun intended) burned into the voter’s mind to ensure that we are able to approach our right to suffrage with confidence, trust and enthusiasm.

To be honest, there are so many other equally worrisome issues surrounding the automation of elections. There are questions on corruption and the procurement process. There are questions on the capability of the winning bidder SMARTMATIC to guarantee the connectivity of remote areas of the Philippines. There will always be questions on the security of the process especially under the current political cock(or hen)fight. These all build on the question of whether COMELEC is willing to engage the public to ensure that automation happens in the right manner and towards the objective of free, fair and honest elections.

And that is the bottomline, shall we be invited by COMELEC to peep into the black box? To see the workings and understand the processes that will take our convictions into the shaded ovals of the ballot, into the collective digital aggregation of the automated elections and into the fair, free and honest elections of officials who we can hold accountable in our bid for nation-building?

COMELEC should take the lead in illustrating the vote. No defensiveness. No derisive answers. No impatience and accusations of paranoia on the part of those with questions. Citizens will participate, citizens and organized groups will pitch in and help but it will be easier to work with an institution that doesn’t see critical collaboration as simply addressing “road blocks put in our way”. It is all our way…

Let us illustrate the vote! No more ambiguities. No more unanswered questions. In an age of information overload, let us not make this the one area where we come up empty.

How about you, how would you illustrate your vote?