Just little more than three months to go before the 2013 elections and people are getting into the reliability of the famous PCOS machines to be used to count the ballots. Information technology, represented by the PCOS machines, is hoped to enable a successful election. But there are issues raised that might results to massive cheating and fraud.
Some people say the PCOS machine results can be altered while being transmitted. While this is technically possible but it does not mean that the election officials and everybody else who know the results coming out of the machine would keep quiet if the results they transmitted for counting at the headquarters do not match their transmission. For someone planning to cheat on the results, this is not the right approach. Even if the method is so advanced, this can be detected very easily by humans since the results are posted in a publicly accessible website.
We’ve heard some concerns raised that the machines can be programmed to favor a certain candidate. This is also technically possible but the random manual count can detect this. Also omeone has to have the resources (financial mostly) to be able to coordinate the favorable programming and ensure that the random manual count does not catch this. This is why the random manual count has to be really selected at random. Also, selection should be determined after the initial counting so that any machine with altered programming has a chance of being selected for random testing.
While there is a possibility of altering the results, the biggest advantage of using the PCOS machines is speed in counting and transmission. The immediate uploading of the results to the central repository makes it very difficult for cheaters to influence the results after the transmission. This leaves very little time for any cheating to be done.
In manual counting, so many tricks can be done to alter or influence the results one way or another. Then there is a relatively higher occurrences of human error during tallying. Then there is intimidation and ballot switching. With the long time needed to complete a manual count, there is a lot of time to implement methods to cheat. Not so with automated counting.
In the election of May 2010, in less than 24 hours after the elections, most municipalities and provinces already have their ballots counted and tallied. The traditional cheating methods in previous elections could no longer be used. Overall, the May 2010 elections was a success, marred only by unreasonable accusations of cheating which could not be proven.
Will Elections 2013 be better? Will information technology make it successful? I think the answer is yes to both questions. But we should remain cautious and help ensure our candidates do not try to influence the results of the election to their favor. The vote of the people is sacred.
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