Commission on Elections is a constitutional body mandated with the responsibility of overseeing the election in the republic. The agency face a multitude of tough security challenges in addition to ensuring a reliable and the integrity of the election returns. There has been proponent for making election systematically process by means of electronic machines. But public's lack of support and confidence in computerization, and legislative efforts of continued scruntinizing sometimes of conflicting laws and regulations, social, and economic have somewhat lost the interests and make it difficult or even impossible in achieving a modern computerization of elections. Added to this are arrays of irregularity in the bidding process. Despite of this concerns there should other alternatives for iniatives.
To gurantee success in achieving a modernization of the election systems through computerization. There must be first an IT Policy Compliance. The agencies concerned with supporting the election process systems either in public or private entities must be mandated to comply with an array of laws and standards, that is to ensure safeguard of the electorate's vote, protect and secure also personnal information. While making the election results accessible to the public but also giving it enough protection against tampering. In addition to IT Policy Compliance a contigency to be able to quickly react to other unexpected disaster, thus there also must be a Disaster Recovery Solutions. Continuous backup and faster recovery contigency must be mandated to protect critical and sensitive data of the electorate's information. Electorate's Information Protection should also mandated to provide protection against unknown threats ranging from tampering election data.
Because the republic has experienced allegation of vote tampering in any elections from local to the national level. Increased declined of trust and confidence for a modern computerized election from the general public are expected, thus by far achieving a computerized election system may not be possible anytime soon. Significantly traditional manual voting system is more preferred by the electorate and they have more confidence in having votes cast on paper ballots rather than relying exclusively on electronic voting machines.
To gain the support from the electorate the agencies responsible for maintaining the elections needs to have a proactive role by means of some effective communication channel. Educating the electorate in sincere means by addressing the advantages and disadvantages of both the traditonal current manual voting system and proposed computerized voting systems. Other channels might include an open forums and discussions such as town hall rountable meetings.
Speculations of massive vote manipulation that the computerization of election process migth result into added adverse impact. The biggest challenges that the traditional manual voting process faced is the reforms to bring honest and credible election results.
Through experimentation process or pilot program it might achieved something worth than nothing at all.
To gurantee success in achieving a modernization of the election systems through computerization. There must be first an IT Policy Compliance. The agencies concerned with supporting the election process systems either in public or private entities must be mandated to comply with an array of laws and standards, that is to ensure safeguard of the electorate's vote, protect and secure also personnal information. While making the election results accessible to the public but also giving it enough protection against tampering. In addition to IT Policy Compliance a contigency to be able to quickly react to other unexpected disaster, thus there also must be a Disaster Recovery Solutions. Continuous backup and faster recovery contigency must be mandated to protect critical and sensitive data of the electorate's information. Electorate's Information Protection should also mandated to provide protection against unknown threats ranging from tampering election data.
Because the republic has experienced allegation of vote tampering in any elections from local to the national level. Increased declined of trust and confidence for a modern computerized election from the general public are expected, thus by far achieving a computerized election system may not be possible anytime soon. Significantly traditional manual voting system is more preferred by the electorate and they have more confidence in having votes cast on paper ballots rather than relying exclusively on electronic voting machines.
To gain the support from the electorate the agencies responsible for maintaining the elections needs to have a proactive role by means of some effective communication channel. Educating the electorate in sincere means by addressing the advantages and disadvantages of both the traditonal current manual voting system and proposed computerized voting systems. Other channels might include an open forums and discussions such as town hall rountable meetings.
Speculations of massive vote manipulation that the computerization of election process migth result into added adverse impact. The biggest challenges that the traditional manual voting process faced is the reforms to bring honest and credible election results.
Through experimentation process or pilot program it might achieved something worth than nothing at all.
- Conduct a pilot program that would start with the village election - barangay election; it can do much to remove common misconceptions; it might encountered serious problems. Nonetheless the computerized election system will serve as a grass-root training grounds leading to a modern automated and efective means of election system. Study the post election results focusing mostly on the participation, acceptance, and concerns of the electorates. A high approval rating would be a biggest considerable option that the same system can operate at the local - municipal/city elections and/or national level - congressional and presidential elections. They key of this pilot program is to provide an indepth study of the system effectiveness and efficiency.
- If the proposal for computerized election systems failed to gain the electorate's trust and confidence. By far an on-site computerized voter's registration identification system maybe best alternative without compromising the traditional manual vote counting process or vote tabulation system. This means that voter's registration system are accessible on-site at the voting center. Aside from validating the voter's registration IDs at the same time in real-time it can validate the voter's identity thru finger print recognition system or any other computerized effective means of physically present identifications. Thereby in the very least ensuring that the identity of the voter is valid. This will also eliminate the traditional manual cross-checking lists on-site which is prone to errors and delays. Also to note it will lighten the work load of the front desk voting precint officers considerably. Where practical, these same voting precints officers may find that computers can make aspects of registration more efficient. In reality they face mounting pressure not only from the electorate but from candidates also to secure and maintain an integrity of voters lists. These are just a some of the few factors that the electorate and legislature needs to consider. To sum it up the voter's registration process would only validate the physical appearance of the identity of the voter at the polling precints and/or centers but would not involve the computerization process of counting of votes which would still be in form of a traditional manual vote counting systems. The process would at least give an opportunity for modernizing the election systems and perhaps in the least prevent fraudalent identities which are commonly known as ghost voters; and duplicate registration or as flying voters.
It is important to recognize that computerization of the election system has greater advantages than disadvantages.
