But add that serious concerns remain
By WILLARD CHENG
ABS-CBN News
Foreign observers from the Asian Network of Free Elections (ANFREL) said Thursday said that the automated voting system implemented in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) elections was a "welcome improvement over that manual system in previous elections."
The foreign observers in the ARMM polls held Monday presented Thursday their findings on the ARMM elections.
Generally, they commended the Commission on Elections, Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippine National Police for the conduct of a generally peaceful and less violent elections.
Poll irregularities persist
Based from ANFREL’s observation of the elections in the six ARMM provinces however, irregularities and anomalies still attended the elections.
The foreign observers showed photos of underage voters being allowed to vote in some precincts, photos of voters’ list showing the same handwriting and signature, indicating multiple voting, and an envelope containing a P100 bill and a sample ballot, indicating vote buying, etc.
ANFREL said voters were not required to produce ID cards to verify the identity of the voters. They recommended that all voters must be required to show an ID card before voting. The lack of enforcement of this requirement encouraged "phantom voting" and "multiple voting."
They said that the voters’ list with pictures was "valuable" but this should be complemented with requiring voters to show their IDs.
ANFREL said it thinks the computerization and cleansing of the voters’ list, including the use of biometrics, will be a good remedy to address the problem of flying voting.
Voting secrecy was also not consistently observed. They noticed some precincts not setting up proper voting booths that can cover the electronic voting pad to keep secret which candidate the voter was choosing.
Observations on use of machines
ANFREL said it would not recommend which machine or voting system performed better but made the following observations.
For Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) machines, ANFREL said a longer and a more intensive education campaign should be made since "voting by machine is difficult to understand for ordinary voters." The paper trail of the DRE machines should be counted at the end of the voting process to compare the results with the electronic data.
For Optical Mark Reader (OMR), ANFREL said that while "the pre-printed ballots are an improvement over previous system which required writing the name of the candidates, this system still allows human intervention."
They said the system’s having paper ballots leaves "greater potential for cheating."
They observed that some members of the boards of election inspectors (BEIs) and assistants shaded the OMR voting paper for voters. Unused paper ballots should be destroyed in the precincts not in the counting centers, said ANFREL.
ANFREL also noted that the lack of OMR machines "caused counting delay and contributed to a confusing post-election environment."