Automating the Philippine national election - Will it be secure and reliable?

The Philippines, being a democratic country, conducts presidential election every six years. And for the very first time, the Philippines will be automating its national election process in May 2010. This means we can have the results in less than a week. That's fast! But how accurate is it?

I was able to watch the 2006 documentary film, Hacking Democracy. In its website, www.hackingdemocracy.com, the film is described as,

The documentary, first broadcast on HBO throughout November & December 2006, exposes the dangers of voting machines used during America's mid term and presidential elections. Electronic voting machines count approximately 90% of America's votes in county, state and federal elections. The technology is also increasingly being used across the world, including in Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Latin America. Filmed over three years this expos' follows the investigations of a team of citizen activists and hackers as they take on the electronic voting industry, targeting the Diebold corporation.

"Hacking Democracy" uncovers incendiary evidence from the trash cans of Texas to the ballot boxes of Ohio, exposing secrecy, votes in the trash, hackable software and election officials rigging the presidential recount.

Ultimately proving our votes can be stolen without a trace "Hacking Democracy" culminates in the famous 'Hursti Hack'; a duel between the Diebold voting machines and a computer hacker from Finland - with America's democracy at stake.

After watching this film, I'm beginning to have doubts. If they were able to do this in America, how much more here in the Philippines. Just recently, government websites were "defaced" by Filipino "hackers." Websites and election counting machines may be totally different, but the danger is still there. Some of these so-called hackers use malicious programs lying around the Internet to perform these acts. What if, there are also programs out there, intended to hack these counting machines? If they exist, then the "dagdag-bawas" thing, as we all know, will become hi-tech. Instead of just manually changing the figures in election returns, which is very obvious, it can now be done without a trace. Instead of the ballot box snatching, we have malicious programs, doing the snatching virtually. In the documentary film, it was also shown that Al Gore got negative votes against George W. Bush UNDETECTABLY and WITHOUT A TRACE.

Yes, I have my doubts but I'm not against automation. The technology behind these counting machines is not new. It's already being used in many applications, such as those examination checkers used by the Professional Regulation Commission to check board examinations or in optical scanners which convert paper documents (hard copies) into electronic copies. We even had the ARMM election use these machines. 

Technology has changed our lives, some for the better (e.g. TV, cellular phones, Internet), and some for the worse (e.g. nuclear and biological weapons). Sooner or later, whether we like it or not, automated elections will become a standard anywhere in the world. Imagine the Philippines, becoming a country of mature electorates, making use of technology to uphold its democracy. And in order to achieve this, we have to open our minds and embrace technology. But we have to be cautious in using this technology. Two things I can think of, at least, to secure our votes is to forbid anyone to carry any electronic device, including cellular phones inside the precincts, and before voting starts on that day, test runs should be done first in the presence of randomly selected witnesses. Well, just a thought.

Lastly, I am very excited because this will be my first time to exercise my right to vote in a hi-tech election at that. And I am hoping that it will turn out to be an honest, orderly, and peaceful election.

GOD bless the Philippines!