I GOOGLED the definition of the word "hybrid" and found the following:

– an offspring of two animals or plants of different subspecies, breeds, varieties, species or genera

– a person whose background is a blend of two diverse cultures or traditions

– something heterogenous in origin or composition.

Today, it is used more loosely to mean any combination of two or more diverse alternatives, e.g., hybrid computers (analog and digital), hybrid vehicles (combustion engine and electric), hybrid meetings (face-to-face and online), and yes, hybrid election systems (manual and automated).

Hybrids are resorted to because they allow the user to take advantage of most, if not all, the good features of the alternatives.

And so today, politicians, media, and even ordinary people are starting to talk about the hybrid election system.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. To understand this system better, it is best to start from what it was in the beginning.

Post-war elections in the Philippines started in 1946, when a purely manual election system was used, such a system being unchanged for many decades. Following is a brief description of how it was run:

– Voters filled up their ballots by hand, and cast the ballots themselves, by inserting them into the sealed ballot box.

– After the voting period, the BEI (Board of Election Inspectors) tabulated the votes manually, and physically transported the results (election returns, or ERs) to the C/MBoC (City/Municipality Board of Canvassers).

– The C/MBoC tabulated the ERs manually, physically transported the results (Certificates of Canvass, or CoC) to the PBoC (Provincial BoC).

– The PBoC tabulated the CoCs manually, physically transported the results (Provincial CoCs) to Congress and the Presidential Election Tribunal, for the final tabulation of the senatorial and party-list votes and presidential/vice presidential votes, respectively.

Good points: This process, referred to as the "ladderized" system, for obvious reasons, had the significant feature of being very transparent. All the steps in the system were witnessed and fully understood by the voters.

Bad points: There was a very serious problem, however. Because all the steps were done manually, the process was therefore very slow. Even as the precinct activities, including the counting and preparation of the election returns, would only take at most, a day, the physical transport of results from the precincts to the canvassing points and the three-level canvassing steps, would take anywhere from four to six weeks.

The current Comelec automated election system

To speed up the process, a law was passed in 1997, Republic Act 9369, automating the election system. Among its provisions are:

– It authorizes the Commission on Elections to use an automated election system that "encourages transparency, credibility, fairness and accuracy of elections."

– It further declares that "it is the policy of the State to ensure free, orderly, honest, peaceful, credible and informed elections ... which shall involve the use of an automated election system that will ensure ... that the process shall be transparent and credible and that the results shall be fast, accurate and reflective of the genuine will of the people." (Emphasis mine)

– On Election Day, the voters shaded their candidate choices in the ballots, fed the ballots into the black box — the vote counting machine — then at 7 p.m., the VCM tabulates the votes, prints out the results (ERs) and distributes copies according to law.

– The results are electronically transmitted to the three-level canvassing points where they are further tabulated to arrive at the city/municipality, provincial and national results.

– This system, however, was not implemented until after the 2007 elections. It was first used in the 2008 ARMM (Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao) elections and nationally, in the 2010 elections

Good points: In the past five elections, from 2010 to 2022, which all used the Smartmatic VCMs, results were produced almost instantaneously — and the throughput (total) time was less than a week. The results were assumed to be accurate. There were very few protests filed, if at all. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) was happy with it and it appeared to trust its results.

Bad points: None of the voters witnessed the counting of the votes. If the VCM and its software, which was developed (originally, at least) by foreigners, were tinkered with and manipulated, the voters wouldn't know. The system practically "killed" the protest process because of the difficulty in spotting (automated) fraud, if any. The book, Code Red, supports this position; it says, "Unobservable vote-counting is inherently insane."

Strong doubt has been expressed by voters who could not believe that Marcos Jr. could double his votes in six years, yet leave the votes of his opponent, Robredo, practically unchanged.

Some IT practitioners who are familiar with election systems were not happy and were adamant in trusting the results. Or, even if they could trust the past elections' results, they worry that it might lead to complacency about future ones, which can then be taken advantage of, by unscrupulous candidates and election officials.

Analyzing the decision more deeply, it makes one wonder why the Comelec spent some P10 billion to automate the precinct activities, which, when they were manually done, only took 5 to 12 hours, anyway (24 hours, in extreme cases). The automation of the canvassing system must have cost them only about P300 million, but it saved them more than 30 days.

And one item that the Comelec might have failed to realize — and still fails to realize — was that the system used, while fast, was not compliant with one very important requirement in elections: that of transparency, which, in effect, weakened the credibility of the results. It is, after all, transparency that makes election results unassailable.

In addition, the Comelec might have failed to realize that with the system it used, the voters lost their right to witness the counting of their votes. And chances are... many did not understand how those VCMs counted their votes.

To be continued on Monday, Aug. 29, 2022