Our democracy is at risk: What are the mitigating control measures?

With the decision of the Comelec to lease the 93,977 units of Smartmatic’s Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) machines, the new advertised name to mask the bad image of its original name Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS), our democracy is at risk for the third time in the hands of the Latinos in 2016 elections! Past experiences would attest that Smartmatic, in tandem with Comelec, disregarded the Automated Election Law (RA 9369), e-Commerce Act (RA 8792), Government Procurement Reform Act (RA 9184), and the Supreme Court’s Rules on Electronic Evidence (REE). Comelec didn’t even promulgate the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of RA 9369 making our automated election system (AES) vulnerable to anything favorable to Smartmatic’s shortcomings.

It is unfortunate that our new Chairman Andy Bautista inherited this supposedly controllable mess in Comelec. But our new Chairman can still do something and make a difference by strictly complying with the provisions of RA 9369 and by considering other issues explained below.