Dick Gordon’s vital receipts/ Valie Baricanosa

For the first time, voters’ receipts were issued by the Commission on Elections during the synchronized May 9 national and local elections. The receipts, legitimized by the Supreme Court just a few weeks before election day, gave voters the assurance that the vote counting machines (VCMs) appreciated, and recorded their votes properly. The man to be thanked for this is Senator-elect Richard “Dick” Gordon.

When Filipinos went out to cast their votes, they were issued voters’ receipts that indicated the names of candidates they shaded in the ballot sheets. When we were still having manual elections, it was quite common to hear registered voters saying they will not bother to go out and vote since their votes will not really be counted to their chosen candidates anyway because of the massive fraud that used to mar every manual elections.

The idea of having voters’ receipts is not new. Dick who acted as the prime mover in getting the first automation law, worked to have it amended to make it in keeping with the more advanced automated election technologies that had become available and to improve the safeguards required by the law. This law was enacted in 1997 and was supposed to be implemented nationwide in the succeeding election after the ARMM poll when it was pilot-tested. However, this did not materialize.

The automation law was intended to keep abreast of the technologies of the times, so Dick had to work for, and successfully got an amending law passed in 2007 – though not without hurdling obstacles from colleagues.

The measure passed, but a big obstacle came up. The Commission on Elections refused to comply with the amended safeguards. Thus, the automated polls of 2010 and in 2013 were perceived to be dismal failures in achieving clean, honest, orderly and credible elections because of the Comelec’s failure to comply with the safeguards required by Republic Act 9369 or the amended Automated Elections System Law which was passed in 2007. Among the more salient safeguards that were not complied with at that time were the source code review, random manual audit, digital signatures requirement, and the voter verified paper audit trail.

Before the national elections of 2013, Dick, together with his Bagumbayan Volunteers for a New Philippines Party and lawyers from the GDR Law Firm, took the Comelec to the Supreme Court. He petitioned the high tribunal to compel the Comelec to show the source code of the PCOS that would be used in the 2013 elections. During the oral argu- ments, Dick very impressively and exhaustively argued his case. However, the Supreme Court did not act on petition.

For this year’s polls, the Comelec, with its new officials, again attempted not to implement the law. After announcing and even demonstrating last year that the vote counting machines were fully equipped with features that will ensure compliance with the safeguards, last February it made another announcement that they had deactivated some features, particularly the voter verified paper audit trail feature. They claimed that the VPPAT would only unnecessarily extend the voting period and it could be used to promote vote buying and vote selling. But vote-buying and vote-selling was precisely what Dick sought to prevent.

So off Dick went to the Supreme Court again. The High Tribunal this time decided in favor of his petition – just a few weeks before election day. The Comelec had no choice but to implement the VVPAT, but not without making a lot of protestations. The poll body also insisted that they could only issue a voters’ receipt sans the necessary security features because they lacked time to change the final trusted build of the vote counting machines (VCMs).

Still, it was a victory, not for just Dick, but the voting population. In the voting precincts on May 9, with the receipts coming out of the machine less than a minute after our ballot came out, we, voters, had the assurance of our votes recorded in our candidates’ names. If there have been discrepancies, the protesters can take them to the Comelec.

I’m glad Dick’s been reelected to the Senate. I expect him to rock the boat again, if he deems necessary.

* * * The family’s favorite fish is hito, or catfish, which is readily available and affordable in public markets. And you can be sure you’re getting it fresh as it wriggles inside fish nets in the vendors’ stalls. You fry it, steam it, broil it, or cook it in thick coconut milk, lemon grass and ginger, and presto, you have a delectable dish.

I thought hito was a Philippine fish. No way. From sources, I learned that the first efforts at raising catfish were made in the early 1900s at federal and state fish hatcheries in the US. In the 1950s commercial catfish farming started in Kansas and Arkansas. Today Mississippi is the leader in the agricultural enterprise, producing thousands of pounds in thousand acres of farms.

I still have to find out how the fish came to Philippine shores – maybe with the American Thomasites or soldiers.

To know how hito is raised, the family