oes presentation by gus lagman

Automation of Automation of ElectionsElections

Why do we need to automate elections

Process is too long. It takes 25-40 days before national positions can be proclaimed.

To eliminate wholesale cheating, incl. DAGDAG-BAWAS

The Manual Election SystemThe Manual Election System

Definition of Terms BEI - Board of Election Inspectors (250,000)

CMBOC - City/Municipal Board of Canvassers (1,600)

PBOC - Provincial/District Board of Canvassers (200)

NBOC - National Board of Canvassers (Comelec/Congress)

ER - Election Returns

SOV - Statement of Votes

COC - Certificate of Canvass

The Manual Election SystemThe Manual Election System

1. Ballots tallied by BEI in each precinct and ERs prepared

2. BEIs bring ERs to CMBOCs

3. CMBOCs canvass ERs and prepare SOVs and COCs; bring them to PBOCs

4. PBOCs canvass COCs and prepare provincial COCs and SOVs; bring them to NBOC

5. NBOC (Comelec) canvasses COCs; Congress canvasses Pres/VP COCs

Manual Tallying/Canvassing Time Line

10 days 20 30 40

CITY / MUNICIPAL, PROVINCIAL AND NATIONAL CANVASSING

(25 – 40 DAYS)PRECINCTTALLYING

5-12 hrs

Given the above time line, it becomes obvious, which phase of the election process should be automated.

So now, we want to apply technology in our elections ...

1. to speed up the process and to be able to proclaim the winning candidates earlier;

2. to minimize, if not eliminate, cheating;

Ahh … but we have added a third ...

3. to make the election process transparent to the public.

In automating elections, two issues immediately come to mind:

How do we secure the system?How do we secure the system?

Which technology should we adopt?Which technology should we adopt?

Two ways of securing a system

Fence it in very tightly so Fence it in very tightly so no intrusion can ever no intrusion can ever occur (security by occur (security by obscurity).obscurity).

However, implementor However, implementor must prove to all must prove to all interested parties that interested parties that system is indeed system is indeed extremely secure.extremely secure.

Not easy to convince all; Not easy to convince all; there will always be there will always be doubters.doubters.

Secure the system, but make a copy of all software and data (read only) accessible to all interested parties and to the public.

Proof of veracity and accuracy of results becomes automatic.

We favor this because it is the transparent alternative.

Features of an ideal automated election system for the Philippines

Automates canvassing Tight security measures All steps transparent to the voting public Software used available to the public Digital counts and results, in all steps, available to the

public (any one can do his own tabulation) Results quickly verifiable all the way to original source

documents Cost-effective (P4-8 billion, depending on the solution) Minimum or no training required for >40M voters Minimum or no storage concerns after each election

process Not dependent on the trustworthiness of the implementors

Alternative election automation technologies

1. DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) System – “touch-screen”

2. OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) System – pre-printed ballots; choices are marked

3. OES (Open Election System) - manual voting & counting, and automated canvassing PC-based data encoding of ERs

4. OES-OMR System – pre-printed ballots, read by OMRs at the voting centers (schools)

Direct Recording Electronic SystemDirect Recording Electronic System1. 2-4 Units per

precinct

2. Touch screen, mouse, or keyboard

3. Voter’s choices printed for audit purposes

4. At end of voting (3:00pm), ER is printed

5. ER transmitted to CMBOC and NBOC

6. NBOC transmits data to interested parties

7. CMBOC produces SOV and COC; transmits to PBOC

8. PBOC produces SOV and COC; transmits to NBOC

9. NBOC produces SOV and COC

DOMINANTPARTY

DOMINANTOPPOSITION

CITIZENSARM

MEDIA &OTHERS

CITY/MUNICIPALBOARD OF CANVASSERS

PROVINCIALBOARD OF CANVASSERS

NATIONALBOARD OF CANVASSERS

PRECINCTS

Direct Recording Electronic System

Instantaneous tally of votes at precinct level

If all precincts connected, almost instantaneous canvass at City/Mun., Prov., & Natl. levels; ergo, theoretically, national results known 1 hr. after close of voting

Less work for BEI With one printer per

precinct, printing of 30 copies of ER at precincts is easy

No ballot box snatching

Cost prohibitive, estimated at P15-20B (some est. >P30B)

Logistics can be a nightmare (750K units to 250K locations)

Thousands of technical people req’d (but where to deploy?)

BEI training staggering 40 Million voters to be

trained Where online connection is

unavailable, difficult to secure electronic media (CDs)

After each election, storage of 750K units is major concern

Not transparent. Voters will distrust vote-counting that they did not see (a big issue in the US)

PROs CONs

If we can’t see it, If we can’t see it,

we can’t trust it!we can’t trust it!

TransparentElections.org

Optical Mark Recognition

1. Voters mark pre-printed ballots

2. Ballot boxes brought to City/Mun Tab Center.

3. ERs printed; signed by BEI

4. CMBOC tabs all ERs; produces SOV and COC

5. ERs, SOV & COC sent to PBOC and NBOC

6. NBOC transmits to interested parties

7. PBOC tabs COCs; produces Prov SOVs, COCs

8. PBOC transmits all data to NBOC; produces Nat’l SOV, COC

2

6

3

4

5

5

7 8

Optical Mark Recognition

Ballots are pre-printed so voters simply mark choices

Voter training minimal, relative to DRE

Faster, because tally of votes automated

Less work for BEI at precinct level

Cost less than DRE; approx. P8B (using $2,000 OMRs)

Internal tallying. Voters won’t see and may not trust count

Wholesale cheating, usually possible only at canvassing level, can happen at precinct level

Sensitivity to external marks or smudges

Difficult to fairly resolve over-marked ballots

Easier to add to under-marked ballots

Need to store specialized OMR machines

PROs CONs

But … the newspapers reported that the automation of the last ARMM election was successful.

Was it?

Problems with DRE

1. Problems in the initialization of voting machines since some of the BEIs committed repeated errors in punching their pin codes. Designated IT experts had to take over the initialization process to speed up the process because this has caused delay in voting.

2. Operational delays in starting the machine due to defective DREs which were however immediately replaced.

3. Incidents of automatic machine shut down while the voters were casting their votes. It was resolved by replacing the electronic voting machines (EVMs).

4. Many BEIs were unfamiliar with the EVM due to the overnight substitution of BEIs with untrained persons which could have been perpetrated by interested parties.

Problems with DRE (cont.)

5. Many voters and BEIs were unfamiliar with the system since there was hardly any opportunity to see and test the DRE before the elections, this could be attributable to lack of voter education due to time constraints.

6. There were several instances where illiterate voters and those who were not familiar with the new system were being accompanied by another person inside the precincts as coach. The relationship between the voter and his/her companion was not properly validated. These so called coaches do not only guide the voters inside the voting precincts but even control the hand of the voter as to who to vote. Even some of the BEIs and watchers have been seen coaching the voters as well.

7. On the secrecy of voting, there were no booths to cover the DRE machines enabling the voters of another adjacent DRE machine to see the votes being cast.

8. Size of the candidates’ pictures (too small) made the image unclear.

Problems with OMR

1. Votes shaded in the OMR ballot were exposed to tampering. Reports of unscrupulous erasures were documented.

2. The distribution of the official OMR Ballots were likewise exposed to the threat of advance shading.

3. The voters would sometimes accidentally scratch or ink-blot the OMR ballots which hampered its optical scanning.

4. The folding and unfolding of OMR ballots resulted to some extent in time inefficiency at the counting centers.

5. In a number of the PPCRV’s poll watchers reports, some BEIs, accidentally perhaps, tore off the bar code of the ballots resulting in their rejection.

6. The BEIs had the lack of procedural knowledge on the disposition of invalid ballots.

Problems with OMR (cont.)

7. Valid ballots that were crumpled, folded (to fit in the size of the ballot box) and those that contained unnecessary markings or smudges as well as those lightly shaded ballots were rejected, which slowed down the counting.

8. The number of ballots to be counted per ACM was not as it was projected. There are discrepancies in the counting of ballots between those who actually voted with results counted. An example of this was experienced in one of the precincts of Shariff Kabunsuan where the actual number of voters is 371 but the machine counted only 276, there was a discrepancy of 95 ballots papers. But, after the BEIs conducted a recount the machine counted 365.

9. Incidents of over voting in some precincts that used OMR, such as Bumbaran, Lanao del Sur, were also encountered because of BEIs voting in their assigned precincts. In these cases the result was invalidated (treated as zero) and COMELEC had to override it.

Problems with OMR (cont.)

10. The counting and Canvassing System (CCS) was not programmed to accommodate failure of elections in some municipalities, such as Balindong, Lanao del Sur and Basilan, thus the machine had to be shut down to force the system to close the counting. There were incidents wherein the system would not close the counting and canvassing since it showed that it didn’t count 100% of the total votes from all the precincts though all precincts were able to count the votes.

11. Some ACMs to include laptops and printers overheated, stopped functioning and had to be re-started.

12. Constant paper jamming (of the OMR Ballots).13. The attached full 196-key Keyboard in the ACM is

open to programming intrusion.

But even assuming that use of the DRE and OMR during the ARMM elections were successful …

From Dr. Aviel Rubin’s book, “Brave New Ballot”

“Past performance is no guarantee of future results, especially when it comes to security.”

“Success on a small scale does not guarantee success once the scale of a project is enlarged.”

Besides (and very few people realize this), …

The ARMM election is a non-event!


We are NOT vendors of election systems

We are a team of like-minded IT practitioners who have implemented election-related projects in the past, using ICT

Option 2: Open Election System PC Encoding

1. Votes cast & tallied as in manual voting

2. ERs brought to school encoding (PC) center

3. ERs validated then posted on the web w/ BEIs digital signature

4. CMBOC will access database, produce SOV, COC

5. All interested parties may access and process the data by themselves

6. All interested parties can send SMS to watchers to verify figures

7. PBOCs access DB; produce Prov SOVs and COCs

8. NBOC accesses DB for final results




DOMINANTPARTY

DOMINANTOPPOSITION

CITIZENSARM

MEDIA &OTHERS

DOMINANTPARTY

DOMINANTOPPOSITION

CITIZENSARM

MEDIA &OTHERS

VOTING CENTER

ENCODING CENTERPRECINCTS

Open Election System

Most transparent - voters and watchers observe tally at precinct level

No need for voter training Once ER is encoded, result

(web database) becomes accessible to the public

Cost affordable at about P2B (Comelec only buys PCs/servers)

PCs/servers can be passed on to DepEd after each election

No storage concerns, because machines can be passed on to DepEd

Ballot box snatching/switching will not affect results

Manual tallying is tedious ERs will have to be

encoded Looking for tens of

thousands of encoders is a challenge

Since it’s still manual tallying, public may think that election is not automated

PROs CONs

If we adopt OES …

This COMELEC would leave the legacy of making the Philippines probably the first country in the world to use technology to effect transparency in all steps of the election process.

If OES is the best system for the Philippines because …

it is the least expensive it makes wholesale cheating

extremely difficult to execute all steps are transparent to the

voting public

… then what are we worried about?

In its resolution dated 29 November 2008, the CAC recommended the

following technologies:

Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) or Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) technology for all areas, subject to the election automation budget of the COMELEC;

Central Count Optical Scan (CCOS) technology for all other areas not covered by DRE or PCOS technology; and

the public telecommunications networks for the transmission of results.

With all due respect to the CAC, we truly cannot comprehend why DRE remains an option.

We cannot understand why there seems to be a compelling reason to use DRE.

It is the most expensive

Using it will be a logistical nightmare

It is the least transparent

Reality check …

IF the COMELEC has already made the political decision to use DRE or OMR, then following is our recommendation …

Disallow the use of DRE (should be non-negotiable!)

OMR should be voting center-based (school-based), NOT precinct-based (unless they can find an OMR that’s less than P20,000 each)

Option 2: Open Election System PC Encoding

1. Votes cast & tallied as in manual voting

2. ERs brought to school encoding (PC) center

3. ERs validated then posted on the web w/ BEIs digital signature









DOMINANTPARTY

DOMINANTOPPOSITION

CITIZENSARM

MEDIA &OTHERS

DOMINANTPARTY

DOMINANTOPPOSITION

CITIZENSARM

MEDIA &OTHERS

VOTING CENTER

ENCODING CENTERPRECINCTS

Open Election System- OMR

1. Voters mark pre-printed ballots

2. Ballot boxes brought to school tab (OMR) center.

3. Ballots fed into OMR then ERs printed; signed by BEI

4. ERs posted on the web









DOMINANTPARTY

DOMINANTOPPOSITION

CITIZENSARM

MEDIA &OTHERS

DOMINANTPARTY

DOMINANTOPPOSITION

CITIZENSARM

MEDIA &OTHERS

VOTING CENTER

OMRPRECINCTS

Some final words about DRE …

Peter Erben, who was a speaker in November’s Vendors’ Fair said that electronic voting machines are “..in its infancy with significant problems still facing their widespread use ...”

Kinstall Brace, president of Election Data Services, a company that examines voting machine usage across the country stressed that “From 2004 to 2006, electronic voting machine usage went up and 2006 was the high water mark. Then use came down. From 2006 to 2008, every jurisdiction that has changed has gone to optical scan … and election administrators are now moving their decisions in that direction.”

Some parts of Florida and California, all of Connecticut, parts of New York and other jurisdictions around the country, switched from either DRE or lever machines to optical-scan systems.

Comm. Rene Sarmiento

And we may become the laughingstock of other countries … for using a technology that is now, because of their sad experience in at least two elections, being discarded in the United States.

Actually, if I were a candidate and I Actually, if I were a candidate and I had control over the Comelec, I had control over the Comelec, I would recommend DRE, so it would would recommend DRE, so it would be easy to cheat.be easy to cheat.

Please join …


… make our elections transparent!

Thank you!Thank you!

oes presentation by gus lagman

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