Since the 2010 elections, voters in the Philippines have been using PCOS (precinct count optical scan machines) manufactured by Smartmatic to automatically count ballots. The results are then printed and sent electronically to the city or municipal Board of Canvassers.
Experts recently called for a shift to manual counting to give transparency.
Former Comelec commissioner, Gus Lagman suggests hybrid polls for 2022:
We wish that the Comelec would count the votes manually instead of just showing us the results without us finding out how the votes were counted. I'm recommending that the votes be counted manually but at the same time there should be assistance from a person with a laptop so that as the votes are being counted, one is added to the candidate that was just read from the ballot. So, manual and laptop-assisted.
Lagman cited that progressive countries like Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands and even some states in the United States have reverted to manual counting because automated counting is not transparent.
Comelec Commissioner Rowena Guanzon said this proposal was not feasible because the combination of manual voting and counting, and automated canvassing and transmission would defeat the purpose of speedy and credible elections. The counting of votes for president and vice president alone, done manually, would take weeks or even a month to finish.
We would add here that to have the best of both worlds - automation and transparency - Philippines should implement verifiability accompanied by Risk Limiting Audits
A risk-limiting audit (RLA) is a powerful and easy way to check whether machines counted votes accurately and derive confidence in the results. .
Devised by Philip B. Stark1 from University of California, Berkeley, risk-limiting audits
“address the limitations and vulnerabilities of voting technology, including possible flaws in algorithms used to infer voter intent, configuration and programming errors, mechanical problems, and malicious subversion.”
An RLA involves
storing paper ballots securely until they can be checked
manually comparing a statistical sample of paper ballots to the computers' records for those same ballots
Advantages of an RLA:
samples can be small and inexpensive if the margin of victory is large
there are options for the public to watch and verify each step
The US National Academy of Sciences2, in their comprehensive report of 2018, Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy expressed strong support for RLAs:
“States should mandate a specific type of audit known as a “risk-limiting” audit prior to the certification of election results. By examining a statistically appropriate random sample of paper ballots, risk-limiting audits can determine with a high level of confidence whether a reported election outcome reflects a correct tabulation of the votes cast. Risk-limiting audits offer a high probability that any incorrect outcome can be detected, and they do so with statistical efficiency; a risk-limiting audit performed on an election with tens of millions of ballots may require examination by hand of as few as several hundred randomly selected paper ballots. States should begin with pilot programs of risk-limiting audits and fully implement these audits for all federal and state election contests – and local contests where feasible – within a decade.” (emphasis is ours)
We would also strongly urge stakeholders in Pakistan to devise a similar strategy and road map for RLAs to secure our proposed EVM deployments.