RANDOM manual audit of the voting in elections is important because the whole nation wants a clean and honest implementation of this democratic political exercise. It seems this tall order cannot be fully guaranteed by the electronic machines that we use. While many countries use electronic voting (E-voting) as we do, those who have tried to computerize their elections were disappointed at the weaknesses of the system, and reverted back to using paper ballots and manual count.
These countries are Germany, the Netherlands, Paraguay and Ireland. A Constitutional Court in Germany ruled that it is not transparent enough and dropped the practice of using voting machines in 2009. In 2007, Netherlands reverted to paper ballots after anti E-voting activists showed that computerized voting is not secure, using experimental hacking.
‘Random manual audit is the
Comelec’s answer to doubts
and concerns aired by many
about how Smartmatic is smartly conducting our version of E-voting for more than a decade now.’
Random manual audit is the Comelec’s answer to doubts and concerns aired by many about how Smartmatic is smartly conducting our version of E-voting for more than a decade now.
The RMA is a manual examination of the ballots to validate the count of the vote-counting machines.
The Commission on Elections did the right thing in releasing early the guidelines for the conduct of the random manual audit (RMA) for next year’s elections. In Resolution 10738, the poll body said at least one clustered precinct in every legislative district shall be randomly selected for the RMA.
The actual number of precincts to be selected in a legislative district shall be determined by proportional allocation. The maximum number of clustered precincts to be selected shall not be more than 759.
The RMA will start not later than five days after election day and shall be held at a venue within the National Capital Region to be determined by the Random Manual Audit Committee. The RMA Center shall primarily comply with the safety and health protocols, including working inside a “safety bubble set-up.”
The RMA committee is composed of the Consolidation Canvassing System Operator recognized by the Comelec, the Philippine Statistics Authority, and the poll body itself. We trust that they will do their job well.
