Hi-tech machines or manual counting for 2025 polls?

EDITORIAL

This early, political analysts are taking barbs at the Commission on Elections (Comelec) which announced it was looking to tap machines equipped with high-speed scanning capacity and at least 13-inch screens where voters will be able to verify if their votes have been counted.
    Some say it might be better to return to manual process if only to return credibility of election results.
    According to Comelec Chairperson George Garcia, they will be looking for the said features in the new automated system they intend to utilize in the 2025 elections to ensure better transparency and faster results.
    “We want to use a technology where the machine will transmit to concerned party all at once at the same time. We also want to have a big screen so that the voters will be able to see whole ballot (front and back) on the screen,” he said at the Manila City Hall Reporters’ Association (MACHRA) Balitaan sa Harbor View on Tuesday.
    Under the system, Garcia said watchers may take pictures of the ballots and later on do their own counting but by that time, the machines have already transmitted the results to avoid any delay in the canvassing.
    At the same time, he said they are fast-tracking the terms of reference (TOR) which they expect to release this week.
    They are also hoping to start the procurement process for the automated system by July.
“Because if the machine is good, if people don't understand it, they won't be able to vote properly. Trust will always begin with voters' education and information," he added. 
    This, as despite heavy losses in the past three elections, the Liberal Party of the late president Benigno Aquino III vowed to slug it out again and emerge victorious in the next elections, the May 2025 senatorial elections.
    “We have started our preparation. We have started to organize more from the youth sector, or more independent sectors, or those who have allied advocacy with respect to our philosophy of governance,” LP president Rep. Edcel Lagman vowed.
    “We have started and we will pursue it in preparation for the May 2025 midterm elections, and subsequently in the 2028 elections. We are starting early and I hope we’ll be able to get more supporters in order to get a better result for the opposition in 2025,” he added.
    It was three consecutive losses for LP that started in May 2016, when former president Rodrigo Duterte overwhelmingly won, followed by the May 2019 senatorial polls, where no LP candidate ever won, except in May 2022 – where only Sen. Risa Hontiveros got lucky.
    “We will have to put up candidates without most probably filling up the slate because that will disperse our resources,” Lagman, a congressman from Albay’s first district, told “The Chiefs” on Cignal TV’s One News.
    “We will have six or seven candidates only. We will support them nationwide. We’re trying on the process of educating our electorate that they should be able to select the credible candidates, which we are going to put up as official candidates of the LP,” he said.
    Lagman, an independent opposition lawmaker, was elected LP president in September 2022.
    “We are also talking about alliances with other groups to beef up opposition’s reach. We are intensifying our campaign against disinformation because the LP candidates were victims of this disinformation,” he explained.
    “It’s really unfortunate that the majority coalition is so overwhelming that what the majority wants, the majority gets. But there has to be an opposition in a democratic setting. Otherwise, there will be no democracy,” Lagman declared.
    But first, for elections to be credible, the process, including voting machines must be credible. This according to analysts who said, there is logic in returning to manual elections.