Restoring public vote-counting with technology
THE National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) has consistently asserted that transparency of the vote count was lost when the Commission on Elections (Comelec) automated the national and local elections (NLEs) in 2010 and in the NLEs that followed. Doubts on the integrity and credibility of the election results have been raised due to the absence of transparency of the vote count.
While Comelec has maintained that several transparency measures have been put in place, including the conduct of mock elections, local source code review, field tests and other kinds of tests, and public demonstrations, among others, Namfrel has maintained that transparency measures are not enough and are not the same as transparency of the vote count itself. The democratic election principle of secret voting, public counting has not been observed in the last five NLEs where the automated election system (AES) was used.
Prior to the automation of elections, Namfrel volunteers and other watchers observed how each ballot was read by the chairman of the board of election inspectors (now called the electoral board), how each vote was recorded on the tally board and tally sheet, how the recorded votes were counted, how the election return was finalized, and how the election return was transported from the polling precinct to the city or municipal board of canvassers. The details of each of these steps have been hidden from public view with the use of a black box called the precinct count optical scan (PCOS), later called the vote counting machine (VCM).
Namfrel is beginning to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Comelec chairman George Garcia told Namfrel representatives who observed and participated in the end-to-end demonstration of the proposed AES of Miru JV (or Miru Joint Venture composed of Miru Systems Co. Ltd., Integrate Computer Systems, St. Timothy Construction Corporation, and Centerpoint Solutions Technologies, Inc.) last February 21, 2024 that the poll body has adopted Namfrel’s recommendation to put a QR code in the voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT).
The Miru JV demonstrated each stage in the AES process: from the setting up of the AES using the election management system (EMS) to the voting and vote counting using the proposed automated counting machine (ACM) and to the consolidation and canvassing of votes through the ladderized process. The transmission of election results was not part of the demonstration, which is treated by the poll body as a separate but related project. The final stage in the Miru JV system is the public counting of votes after the successful transmission of the official election returns to the designated destination servers.
The Miru JV representative explained that the QR code on each VVPAT will be scanned using the camera mounted on the video display screen of the ACM to retrieve the corresponding ballot image that is stored in the ACM storage. Upon query, the Namfrel representative was told that encoded in the QR code is a link to the corresponding ballot image. Once the ballot image is retrieved, the votes will be recorded and then counted before observers and watchers are present.
The Namfrel representatives sought to clarify its recommendation with Chairman Garcia and other commissioners who were willing to listen to the proposal. That is, to be encoded in the QR code is the human-readable portion of the VVPAT. Among the human-readable portion of the VVPAT is the list of names of candidates per position that a voter has chosen. Since 2016, voters have learned to verify if the machine correctly captured their votes by going through the VVPAT.
Namfrel leased its Namfrel app in the 2022 elections. Downloadable on smartphones, the Namfrel app was used to capture photos of election returns posted outside the polling precinct. The top portion of the election return up to the results of the vote for the national positions, specifi
cally the votes for president and vice president, and the bottom portion, which showed the system hash code, was captured and processed at the Namfrel headquarters to be compared with the corresponding election return received electronically through the transparency server. Namfrel found a 100 percent match of close to 6,000 samples gathered.
The same Namfrel app will be enhanced to provide a feature that will read the QR code on the VVPAT, enable Namfrel volunteers to count the votes at the polling precinct and generate an unofficial polling precinct-level election result. The resulting vote count done with the Namfrel app may be compared with the election return posted outside the polling precinct, which may be transmitted to Namfrel headquarters for comparison with the election returns electronically received via the transparency server.
The following outcomes will be achieved if Namfrel’s recommendation is adopted and implemented with the ACM:
1. Transparency or public counting of votes at the polling precinct is restored, thus meeting the election principle of public vote counting.
2. Expanded coverage of the vote count audit with the Namfrel app, where smartphones are available.
3. Increased public confidence in the integrity and credibility of the election result at the polling precinct level.
Namfrel’s transparency recommendation is consistent with the Comelec-adopted nomenclature: “Full Automation System with Transparency Audit/Count (FASTrAC).”
The greater outcome is — increased trust in the Comelec. Surely, this is what Comelec has been wanting to achieve through the years.