NAMFREL The Philippine Elections Should Return To Manually Counting Ballots In 2022
NAMFREL – The National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections suggested that Philippines should return to manual ballot counting in 2022.
After the nationwide elections have been conducted, many Filipinos followed television and social media election updates. Following this, groups started protesting against alleged election frauds.
The insinuations rose after reports of malfunctioning election instruments such as VCMs, SD Cards and Election Markers. There was also a delay in transmission of election results that lasted seven hours.
In a response to this, Namfrel suggested the return of Philippine elections to utilizing manual ballot counting system to avoid election troubles such as the ones mentioned.
Augusto Lagman, chairperson of Namfrel also said that the automated count spurred transparency controversies in a report of Athena Imperial in Balitanghali Weekend of GMA News.
He explained:
“Yung pagbibilang sa presinto alam mo, one day lang ‘yan e. One day lang! Malaking bagay kasi nakikita ng mga tao. [Counting in precincts, you know, only takes one day. Only one day! People see it as a big deal]“
Adding that the importance of transparency outweighs the convenience that comes with the much-faster automated ballot counting.
Eric Jude Alvia Secretary General of Namfrel also recalled the same issues in using the automated elections in the past in his statement:
“Alam naman natin na apat na pagkakataon na natin itong gimawa ang automated elections tapos pare-pareho rin ‘yung mga problema, ang layunin nga natin bawat boto mabilang. [We all know that we have already utilized automated elections four times in the past and we encounter the same problems. Our goal is to count every single vote.]”
This is according to an article from MSN News.
He also said that announcing problems in SD Cards and other concerns is like telling people that their vote may not be counted.
Meanwhile, the polling watchdog also praised the Emergency Accessible Polling Place put up to cater disabled people, senior citizens and pregnant women.
They also praised the overall peaceful and systematic conduct of the 2019 Elections.
That is all there is to it, at least for now. We’ll post updates as soon as we got them.