Namfrel to Comelec: Consider reforms for conduct of ’22 polls

A“RE-FORMATTED” election ballot as well as the correct use of digital signature are among the measures currently being pushed by the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) to make the outcome of the 2022 National and Local Election (NLE) more transparent and credible.

In a virtual briefing on Tuesday, Namfrel Secretary General Eric Alvia said they are urging the Commission on Elections to do away with its traditional scheme of arranging the surname of the candidates in the ballots in alphabetical order.

Assigned numbers

INSTEAD they want the candidates to be chronologically arranged based on unique numbers assigned to each candidate and parties or their representatives, which will be randomly assigned by the Comelec before the start of the campaign period.

Namfrel said based on its informal study, which covered 50 volunteers, people were able to vote three times faster with their proposed ballot scheme than using the existing arrangement used by Comelec.

“We were able to find out that voters are able to more easily remember the numbers [associated with their preferred candidates]; at the same time it will also be beneficial for those who are unable to read or write well,” Alvia said.

He noted their proposed scheme will also remove the advantage of name recall as well as pre-election campaigning since the numbers assigned to the candidates will be made known prior to the campaign period.

Technical enhancements

NAMFREL also recommended several technical enhancements in the conduct of the 2022 polls.

Among them: for Comelec to use open source licensing softwares for its automated election instead of the “proprietary” licensed software being required by the manufacturer of the vote counting machines (VCM) used by the poll body.

Namfrel said this will make Comelec’s procurement of the said software “more competitive, less costly, and more transparent.”

It also wants Comelec to adopt an end-to-end use of election mark-up language (EML) when transmitting election results.

Currently, the poll body’s VCMS convert election results, which are in EML format, to comma-separated values (CSV), before it is once again converted to EML when it reaches the servers of stakeholders such as the media, political parties, and election monitoring organizations.

It noted that the format conversion causes delays in the release of election returns, such as the “7-hour glitch” that created so much controversy in the 2019 polls.

QR codes and digital signatures

NAMFREL also wants Comelec to consider printing quick response (QR) codes for election returns and the voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT).

It noted the QR codes will allow stakeholders to efficiently audit the election results even in the polling precincts with the use of mobile phones.

Last, the election watchdog urged Comelec to use unique digital signatures, which come from the election boards instead of the signatures issued by the Comelec main office.

“Adopting said proposal could ensure that electronic results can be verified as authentic, even if the VCM results were not able to be transmitted electronically, as is the case in many parts of the Philippines where internet signal is still poor,” Namfrel said in a statement.

Alvia said they submitted their consolidated proposal to the Comelec advisory council in June and they hope the poll body will implement it in the 2022 NLE.