Divina Grace U. Siang MPA -1 PA 233 1.

Have a comparative analysis of the manual count and automation as electoral process on the following: The Electoral Process in the Philippines has provided different perspectives. Election has been exercised for the purpose of achieving peace harmony and prosperity for its people. Ideally the Electoral Process aims to produce leaders that will truly serve the interest and welfare of the people. To exercise the Right of Suffrage, our right to vote and be voted upon. However, with the birth of development of new technology, the new system of electoral campaign and the electoral process itself conformed to the demands of egovernance. Hence, Electoral Reforms in the Philippines has been instituted through Republic Act No. 9369, An Act authorizing the COMELEC to Automated Election in May 11, 1998 National or Local Elections and Subsequent National Elections, and Local Electoral Exercises, to encourage transparency, credibility, fairness and accuracy of elections. In order to provide a more Comprehensive Analysis on the new Electoral Process, hereunder are the key issues: Voting Procedure Relative to the voting procedure there has been relative amount of significant difference as observed. It has been observed that there was a failure of change management in applying major innovation. Obviously, because of the variety of problems arise. It was observed that most preparations were focused more on technology adoption and very little on polling center management which includes its voting system procedure and crowd management. It can be concluded that both Manual and Automation process has shown disorganization of voting procedures. Where, the automation process had created a

constrained environment because of clustering precincts. The COMELEC resorted to clustering scheme which aimed for efficient deployment of PCOS Machine, from 300,000 to 76,300 precincts. Though, the COMELEC has also formulated a plan for the new lay-out of the voting precincts. Wherein, every inside polling precincts will prepare 10-20 seats in order to accommodate more voters and aside from 3 member of Board of Election Inspector (BEI) support staff should help in establishing voters identity. It has still created crowding and to some precincts the use of 20 seats were not utilized. With the defective PCOs machines, it has also shown that that there is lack of awareness of contingency measures of the BEI and incompetent IT consultants. On the other hand, with the long years of exercising manual election, the voters unfamiliarity of the new ballot has caused delay and difficulty in accomplishing the ballot with the greater tendency of damaging the ballot which caused the ballot to be nulled. However, the automation is advantageous to the senior citizens and those voters who has difficulty in writing. Election Canvass In terms of canvassing the votes, before it would painstakingly take long hours in order to finish the counting. And now printing of election returns was changed from 8 copies to 30 copies (Sec. 22 RA 9369). The tallying of the results was more smooth if there are no glitches encountered. After an hour of the printing the Chairman, may then announce the results of the canvass in the presence of the watchers. And electronically transmit the precinct results to the respective board of canvassers. It shows in this process that, the transmission of the results was more safer and the votes was protected. Ballot switching during the transfer can be avoided. There has been reports in the news, that the BEI has encountered difficulties and problems in the transmission either, defective flash cards /unconfigured cards or defective/malfunctioned PCOS machine.

The canvassing seemed to be in now order and it was less crowded. However, majority of the reports relates to the malfunctioning of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS), defective machines that caused delay of voting coupled long lines under the scorching sun because of the increased number of voters due to clustered precincts. Missing voters name and vote selling is vote-buying still exist and rampant to other province but it was considered to be minimal. Added with the surge of power crisis, there has been power failures in some areas in the country. This years election has also shown that the rate election violence related incident is much lower compared to last election. 2. The effects of the new electoral process

The effects of the process to the community, the issue on the clustering of the precincts. It is inevitable that there are disgruntled voters who opted not to vote because of exhaustion because there was inefficiency in management of crowd and technical problems.

It is a natural phenomenon that we encountered variety of problems as we introduce major innovations. To those people who are open to the changes, they may tend to look the issued into a positive perspective. The effect and impact of this process to the organization and community may be under undetermined considering that we have a considerable amount of technical background in high technologies such as this automated election system.

In a broader perspective, the initiative of instituting new innovations proved that our country is determined towards development. It is vital and significant that we reform our electoral process for in this critical process we select our leader that will holds the future of the country.

To the COMELEC, they may receive negative feedback and speculations regarding the credibility of the PCOS Machines in the accuracy of the results because of the technical problems. However, in general I can say that the automated election system was still a success.

3. Suppose that you are given the chance to introduce innovations, what are those?

I support the reformed electoral system in our country. The automated election system only shows that we are for the development. Innovations were instituted to enhance and provide efficient and effective delivery of services. We starting moving towards the advancement.

The automation was just part of the plans and programs of the government. Thereby, changing the paradigm shift of development leaving the traditional practices towards a new globally competitive and advanced technologies.

In view of the automated election system, based in the aforementioned problems the following are few recommended actions which may strengthen and improved the new electoral systems.

a.) Provision to institutionalized an effective polling center management. Particularly by providing an area for the disabled and senior citizen voters. b.) Intensive EIC on Automated Election System in schools and barangays. c.) Intensive preparation on the Training of BEI on system procedure.

d.) Effective contingency plan and increase the awareness of the BEI in the contingency measurement. There must be prior testing of the condition of the PCOS Machine must be done in advance a month or so, in order that defective machine be replaced. Thereby, providing a effective and smooth election. e.) BEI and coordinators should attend training on crowd management.

In addition to the strengthening in the automated election system. I can also suggest to strengthen organizational reforms and development of Human Resource Development Initiatives. Innovations such as Reengineering the bureaucracy, instituting government procurement reforms, implementing coordinated effort to fight corruption and developing the competencies and capacities of key actors in governance. Through these reforms we may achieve improved public service delivery.

The effective reforms and innovations in the bureaucracy would be feasible if we exercise our votes right, we hope that we elected officials in our government that has the qualities of a good leader with a strong vision and the courage for the true change and development of our country.