Restoring public vote-counting with technology

THE National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) has consistently asserted that transparency of the vote count was lost when the Commission on Elections (Comelec) automated the national and local elections (NLEs) in 2010 and in the NLEs that followed. Doubts on the integrity and credibility of the election results have been raised due to the absence of transparency of the vote count.

While Comelec has maintained that several transparency measures have been put in place, including the conduct of mock elections, local source code review, field tests and other kinds of tests, and public demonstrations, among others, Namfrel has maintained that transparency measures are not enough and are not the same as transparency of the vote count itself. The democratic election principle of secret voting, public counting has not been observed in the last five NLEs where the automated election system (AES) was used.