Finding a meaning of this adage
“DAMN if you do; damn if you don’t.”
This old-age adage seems to fit quite well with the nature of certain sectors among Filipinos if we have to apply this to accepting results of elections. In previous electoral exercises including those held during the so-called manual counting era, delays in the completion of the transmittal and tabulation of votes and in the proclamation of winning candidates were already a source of huge apprehension among those who either stand to benefit or be adversely affected by the situation.
Candidates then were apprehensive that the time lapse was the most convenient way to tamper the result to favor certain parties. And somehow, there were incidents that validated the people’s suspicion. This experience was the compelling reason why the government eventually moved to the computerization of the electoral system which started only some five local and national elections ago.
The government’s migration to the more sophisticated and less manually intervened counting of votes, however, while strongly appreciated by the electorate, remains subject to suspicion of its vulnerability to some kind of technically driven manipulation. The doubting Thomases’ fear is heightened by the thought that this could work in favor of any one party or parties especially those who can afford the services of the best skilled, the brightest and scheming computer genius – one who is willing to compromise his or her talent in exchange for money or loyalty.
It is this character of us Filipinos that somehow gives the most fitting meaning of the earlier-mentioned adage. Yes, the government had to spend a huge amount of money just to jumpstart the computerization of the election processes. It is this move that was adopted by government through the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) to help assuage the fears of the electorate that the long processes in the manual counting, transmittal of election returns and the official canvassing can become the instrument to subvert the will of the majority.
Initially the modernization of the system got a humongous acceptance by the people regardless of party affiliation. The move was extolled as a “game changer” by either the voters or the candidates and parties. Who will not when the winners are known in only one or two days’ time? But the highly partisan nature in us Filipinos did not take long to go back to our suspicious ways. The continuous upgrading of the capabilities of the computers and improvement in the skills of those tasked to man the machines, allowed the consolidation and/or aggregation of votes in minutes only or as soon as the figures are feed on the computers.
Without doubt it is this quick transmittal and consolidation of votes that were assumed by the partisan voters to be the most likely factors that changed the figures in the Marcos Jr. and Leni Robredo contest for the Vice Presidency in 2016. The lead of Marcos Jr. then that was over half a million shortly before midnight in that election in 2016 was overtaken by almost the same number by Robredo by dawn break. Robredo’s slim lead continued until the last ballot was counted. Marcos Jr. immediately suspected of getting cheated by his opponent, initially pointing to the possible interference in the electronically counted votes. So he demanded a recount through the legal means – by lodging a formal electoral protest in the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET). He eventually lost.
Now we have to move fast forward to the 2022 national and local elections. Despite the seemingly continued mistrust of certain sector on the integrity of the computerization processes, the COMELEC did everything to implement the improvement of the system as transparent