Only 73% of the total registered number of Filipino voters were able to actually cast their votes last May 10. Those 27% or 13.7 million voters were either disfranchised, were'nt able to go to the precincts due to work, or, as reports say, a million to five million of them were victims of a new scheme---preventing voters from going to their assigned seats in the actual day of the elections.
Comelec previously said, they expect between 80 to 85% of the voters to cast their votes. In the day of the elections itself, 27% of the people failed to cast their votes. In real terms, that is nearly 13.7 Million voters, more than the 800,000 lead margin of Jejomar Binay against Mar and could probably upset Aquino's lead over Estrada. Aquino's lead is between 5 to 6 million. What if these 14 million disfranchised voters went against Aquino and majority of them voted Estrada and/or Villar?
Even a fraction of this 13.7 milliion could change the political fortunes of Mar Roxas and Jejomar Binay.
It could also probably affect the tenth to the thirteenth standing in the Senatorial race. What is the probability of the people really not voting for Lapid? High, since there is a probability that these 13.7 million Filipinos are celebrity haters or not as jaded as those who voted for Bong Revilla or Leon Guerrero.
The one person with an enormous problem is Mar Roxas. If he loses the count to Binay, for concrete reasons of fraud, how then will he contest this? By going to Congress on May 27 and file protests? If there was fraud, it is like admitting to former president Joseph Estrada's charge that there was indeed, "electronic Garci" and " irregularities in the PCOS machines". How will this affect his buddy, Senator Benigno Aquino III, who leads Estrada not just by a mile, but by almost 5 million.
And when the Comelec admits that 700 PCOS machines faltered, that's about 140,000 "spoiled" votes? That would change the political fortunes not just of the mayors, governors, Congressmen, but even Senators and the Vice President?
How will the elites resolve this contentious issue between Roxas and Binay? I say, let Roxas win. Binay, anyway, still has his Makati turf. If Mar loses, he'll be a bigger problem than Binay.
It could have been very different if Aquino was trailing Estrada, the elites would have raised hell (not just a howl). The system was probably designed to favor Aquino and damn the others, says my favorite barber. Anyway, was it just Aquino who said that another EDSA was in the offing if people cheat him?
Next time, if Villar runs again for President, he should be intelligent enough and say that he'll go to the streets if cheated. Had he did so, Villar could have been at second place. Or, even at first.
By the way...
I am sorry to presume that the 13th and the 14th slots in the ongoing Senate count could still become members of the chamber. According to Atty. Harry Roque, only 12 winners will be included in the present number of 2013 term Senators. To complete the slate, the Senate has to announce a special election for the purpose of electing additional members of the Upper House. This can be done in the forthcoming barangay elections in October.
Okey. So here's the thing.
The Comelec and the Defense secretary admitted that in a worst case scenario, they expect 30% of PCOS Machines to fail. Tita Henrietta de Villa said there are 76,000 PCOS machines that will be used in this elections. So, there will actually be 22,800 PCOS machines expected not to work effectively come May 10, 2010. And how many votes will these be?
Comelec says one machine, one precinct, clustered that is. Meaning, if its a clustered precinct, 1,000 voters. That is about 22.8 million votes that will be MANUALLY counted if this scenario happens. Curiously by the way, if its only 22.8 million, why is COMELEC PRINTING 30 MILLION BALLOTS TO BE USED IN THE MANUAL COUNT?
Okey. So, it's actually fine if all of these votes will still be counted. The question to my mind right now is simply--how many days will it take for the Comelec to finish counting all 22.8 million votes? Let me refresh your memories on a June 19, 2009 press release by COMELEC Chairman Jose Melo on the automated elections? What happened to this?
“The 2010 elections is coming up fast, and the Filipino nation is looking forward to it, quite possibly with more anticipation than any of us can imagine,” Melo told an audience of more than a hundred people at the launch of the website which promises to give voters instant access to candidates and their platforms.
“With automation, we will drastically minimize the impact of human intervention in the process. Teachers serving on the Boards of Election Inspectors (BEI) will not have to stay up – and stay under tremendous pressure – as long as they used to, thereby minimizing the risk to them,” Melo said.
The COMELEC chief added that automation will definitely speed up the electoral process as well. “With the precinct level counting done within an hour, and results available within thirty-six, we will see an electoral exercise unprecedented in the rapidity with which our people will know who the winners will be.”
All in all, Melo said, the poll body is confident that the coming 2010 elections will be “breaking all sorts of records and defying all sorts of gloomy predictions” about the continuing vibrancy and viability of our electoral process.
But Melo emphasized that in order to make the 2010 elections truly something for the record books; political players, the engaged private sector, and the COMELEC must all work together.
“And so we urge everyone who intends to play some role – large or small, as a candidate or as a simple partisan, or as a responsible citizen – to commit ourselves to several key imperatives.”
Among the key imperatives Melo pointed out are the promotion of voters’ registration and protecting the safety and security of the voters – starting this early, on through the campaign and even beyond.
“We who hold ourselves out as leaders of our people, we must guarantee that we will represent the best values, that we will conduct ourselves as befitting servants of the sovereign people, and that we will adhere to the strictest standards of truth, responsibility, courtesy, and respect in everything that we do.”
Remember--there is this period from May 10 to May 30, 2010, lasting for about twenty days (20), which we, as a people, will actually be living in SUSPENDED ANIMATION. Why? Because by twenty days, we don't simply know who really won as CONGRESSMAN, SENATORS, VICE PRESIDENT AND PRESIDENT, thanks to COMELEC. The margin of error is simply astounding and 22.8 million votes can make or break any person's bid for any national or Congressional poll.
If the Comelec fails to count the votes BEFORE MAY 30, there is a BIG PROBLEM--we will still don't have someone to head the Executive department. We expect that, by this time, there is still some semblance or at least SOMETHING THAT WE CAN LATCH ON--a leadership or at least some form of it.
Good if our teachers will speed up the counting in their precincts. But, how many hours will they need to count each and every ballot? Will it be faster than before, given that there is a new form of the ballot?
Based on a confidential COMELEC document presented to a security meeting, various scenarios are expected to happen:
1. In areas where manual counting is being done, expect it to be chaotic (re-phrasing what is in the document). Why chaotic? Because people from different parties and civil society groups will be there, in the precinct, during the counting. Since 20% in a close fight is a huge figure, representatives of politicians will be hammering these, questions here and there, obviously contributing to a slower pace of the entire process. This will happen in areas without media coverages. Hence, higher possibility of fraud.
Fraud will surely happen, or what Melo tagged as "human intervention"--the very scourge that automation wanted to address but, will fail, to the tune of 9 billion pesos.
Pulse Asia says that expect a three cornered fight--Aquino, Villar and Erap. Aquino's numbers hover between 36-37%, let's just make it 37%, Villar's numbers about 25-27% and Erap's between 18 to at least 22% by the elections.
How many votes are we talking about by 37%? If there is 50 million registered voters, traditionally only 80% of them will actually cast their votes. That will be 40 million votes. So, what we're saying, it will only be 40 million votes come May 10, 2010.
If this is 40 million votes, and we have 22.8 million votes to be manually counted, that is not 30% but represents 57% of votes cast. Meaning, we will have 57% of all votes cast to be manually counted and only 43% under automation. Wow.
Okey, let's say Aquino gets 35% of the votes cast, that's only 14,000,000 votes. Fifty seven percent of this will still be in suspended animation, meaning, 7.8 million votes. This is a lot.
How about Villar's? If he gets 27% of the votes cast, that is about 10.8 Million votes. If you take 57% of it, he has 6.176 million votes still to be manually counted.
Do you get it? There is a lot of things that might happen in this scenario because the margins between the two candidates have actually been whittled to a small one, meaning 1.7 million votes difference.
How many hackers do you need to rig the May 10, 2010 elections?
According to Joey de Venecia III, the pioneer in the Information Technology sector here in the Philippines, it only takes thirty (30) hackers to effectively rig the May 10, 2010 elections. That's why, Joey says, twenty percent (20%) of precincts around the country are vulnerable to network or red hat attacks.
Twenty percent (20%) of 400,000 clustered precincts are enough to sow chaos and violence in the forthcoming polls.
With an expected neck-to-neck fight among candidates, not just those running in the presidential polls, but also in the senatorial, the future of the first automated elections here is bleak or even very, very threatened.
De Venecia said cheating could be done through a remote terminal created and specifications specific to make it appear that it is a PCOS terminal. Likewise, extra space in the memory card of PCOS terminals could also be used to accommodate additional votes for specific candidates.
Joey de Venecia III is not overly optimistic on the success of the automated elections since it appears that the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) is not entirely prepared for an untoward situation.
