After the 2019 midterm elections, Senator Imee Marcos, then-committee chair on electoral reforms and people’s participation in the Senate, immediately endorsed the committee report on adopting a hybrid election system (HES) as proposed by then-Senate President Tito Sotto in Senate Bill 7, or the Hybrid Election Act.
In the midst of the May 2025 election aftermath, this should be revived. The reasons for this are legitimate. Under the automated election system (AES), vote-counting became haphazard. Since it was introduced in 2010, irregularities were reported, including the early transmission of votes while voting was still going on, and the incomplete transmissions of results.
There were also reports of the installation of an additional device known as a “queuing server” in the middle of the transmission process, script changes in the middle of the live transmission of results, and foreign access to election servers.
In Benguet, the differences between the winning and losing numbers for local bets were so wide that the supporters of all opposing political parties were surprised, considering that candidates in most local towns were related by blood or otherwise. Here, the possible winners lost while the predictable losers won.
In Mankayan, it was said that the number of actual votes cast was more than the number of registered voters. In Bokod, a mayoral bet wondered why he got only one vote in a barangay where all of the residents there were his blood relatives. All these were blamed on a possible manipulation of the electronic voting machines.
The doubts of the electorate are widespread and scattered but they have no other means to raise their personal observations knowing that these may only gather dust on an election commissioner’s table until the next election comes.
The COMELEC should reconsider going back to manual or hybrid counting at the precinct level to avoid suspicions of rigging, give way to a people’s clamor, and satisfy voters who wish to see their votes counted by people, not by electronic and digital machines that could be operated according to the wishes of a determined manipulator.
The COMELEC gave too much importance to speed and convenience at the expense of transparency since the time the (AES) was used in 2010. In fairness to the voters, every step of the election process must be open to scrutiny by the public. With AES, it follows that election fraud has also become automated and digitized.
The final testing and sealing (FTS) of the machines cannot guarantee a clean count. It is merely a cosmetic move that shows how the machine swallows the ballot, displays on the monitor screen the votes cast by a person and spits out a receipt that is of course a list of the candidates’ names.
After looking at your receipt and leaving the precinct, you no longer know what happens to the votes you cast. Simply because the voters did not count the votes themselves. There is no assurance that the number of votes cast for candidate Juan dela Cruz that the machine counted for us is the same number of votes that comes out in the final tally.
The main reason for the senate bill was that elections in this country could never be transparent and secured under a fully automated election counting since we started using it in 2010. Since that time, complaints of “dagdag bawas” never stopped. To ask for a recount is too costly. That is why we were hostaged into accepting whatever vote count came out.
Hybrid counting would require the manual tallying of votes at the precinct level using the old “tara” style of counting votes and writing on a wide Manila paper to ensure that all vote counting was held in full public view. A video recording and live streaming for future checking would also be recorded.
Under the HES, if a discrepancy of at least 2% occurs between the vote tallies done manually and transmitted electronically, an automatic recount for the position under question would be in order. Here, a picture of the tallies or a video recording would be of great help.
A COMELEC official said the HES would surely mean additional workload for teachers and election officers, but manual counting was what we used to have before the automated system. There was transparency in counting of votes in the old system until someone in Malacanang proposed the use of counting machines for money and control of winning votes.
The reason why there is a provision in the AES that calls for a random manual audit of votes is because there is no transparency in counting the ballots. In the case of a hybrid counting of votes, what is counted manually on the precinct level is transmitted by electronic servers to the next recipient. It is hybrid. The manual process will ensure transparency and security.
By the way, I am reminded of the elections of not so long ago. After voting had stopped at 3pm, people gathered in front of the polling centers and waited for the start of the counting. Meanwhile, a big tally board stood in the plaza or public gyms where the votes of the candidates were totaled.
This is what makes manual elections interesting. People know who won in their localities even before the final tallies were totaled at the city plaza or municipal poblacion. Pray that the hybrid election system would be implemented in 2028.
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Gone were the days when goons, guns, and gold were the features of elections. Except for the guns which are still utilized in some towns, today, the goons and gold are all online. These are on soc-med, particularly on Facebook.
For filing a disqualification case against a politician which is a legal action guaranteed by the Constitution, the man’s family members who do not have anything to do with his actions were attacked.
There were unpardonable words from the online goons who threatened to burn down the house of the family. Ever since peaceful Benguet “welcomed” a politician not of their own kind, politics in Benguet has become unfamiliar and deplorable.
