A Vote of Confidence for Philippine Elections?

It's Sunday afternoon and campaigning for this year's Philippine presidential elections is in full swing. The smell of pork adobo wafts through the air, reminding supporters gathered in this plaza to greet one another with the ubiquitous Filipino welcome: "Have you eaten yet?" Above their clamor, campaign jingles battle for aural supremacy. It's no wonder that Philippine politics are often seen as one big party.

But this fiesta isn't in Manila. This is the Philippines election headquarters in Hong Kong, where nearly 100,000 Filipino overseas voters will be queuing to cast their early vote in what the nation hopes will be its first fully automated polls. In a bid to run a cleaner, fairer election on May 10, the Philippine Commission on Elections (Comelec) has taken on the ambitious goal of digitizing its manual electoral process. Massive voter registration and education drives have been undertaken, registering a record 50 million voters, and civil society and the local media are placing extra scrutiny on this year's electoral process. (See pictures of last year's volcanic eruption in the Philippines.)

Hong Kong stands as its first test. Comelec selected the territory, along with Singapore, for having the highest number of overseas voters — Hong Kong with over 95,000 and Singapore with nearly 32,000, the majority of which, in both countries, are working abroad as domestic workers. With no complete dry runs of the new automated system being held in the Philippines prior to election day, officials have been closely monitoring the territory since voting started on April 10 to see whether the system will fly or falter. (One official of the Philippine Consulate in Hong Kong acknowledged that they were effectively "guinea pigs.")

Notorious for its patronage politics, the Philippine political system has had a colorful electoral history rife with scandal. Most recently, incumbent President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has faced accusations of rigging the country's 2004 national elections in her favor. The issue of corruption is also central in the current presidential election, with some of its front-runners facing fraud allegations of their own. It comes as no surprise, then, that Transparency International ranked the Philippines 139th out of 180 countries in its 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index. Many Filipinos are looking to this election to unseat not only the unpopular Arroyo, but also the country's legacy of political duplicity. And some believe an automated election system will begin to shake an entrenched system of cheating and help the country move toward that goal. (See pictures of last year's politically motivated massacre in the Philippines.)

In the new system, instead of writing in candidates' names on the traditional ballots, voters will now fill in corresponding bubbles on new 25-inch scantrons; instead of dropping their completed ballots into yellow metal boxes, now voters run them through Precinct Optical Scan, or PCOS, machines that feed into secured 3-foot tall black boxes. The Comelec has contracted election technology firm Smartmatic — the company that also helped automate Venezuela's 2004 elections — to bring in some 76,000 of these PCOS machines (and an additional 6,000 back-up machines) to the archipelago. Overseas voters have been given a 30-day head start ahead of their countrymen in the Philippines, but Hong Kong also holds the distinction of being only one of two locations outside the Philippines with PCOS machines.

Statistically the overseas voting population is not expected to be a major battleground for votes — only 590,000 of nearly 9 million Filipinos abroad are registered to vote, making them only 1% of the total Philippine electorate. But it is an important testing ground for transparency. Daphne Ceniza-Kuok, a longtime advocate for overseas voters rights and a volunteer at Bayanihan Center, a Filipino community center in Hong Kong where the vote is being held, calls the absentee vote the "cleansing agent of the electoral process." She believes that the vices that plague traditional Philippine politics — such as vote-buying and ballot-tampering — are less likely to happen overseas, and even less so with the security measures put into place with automated voting.

Others don't see the early overseas voting period as a sufficient test for the new system. Organizations like Kontra Daya, a Manila-based election watchdog group whose name means "Against Cheating" in Tagalog, say the month-long early voting period gives Hong Kong and Singapore ample time to sort out any kinks in the system, but during the 11-hour voting period on May 10 in the Philippines, even a short stall, which has happened twice in Hong Kong, could effectively disenfranchise scores of voters.

And despite the ease of voting championed by officials, an information gap between Comelec and voters persists. Vilma Guevarra, a domestic helper who has been working in Hong Kong for the past 12 years, was unable to vote in this election. Unaware of an electoral rule that requires that she have voted in the two previous elections to remain a registered voter, she was turned away from the polls. "I'm sorry, that's just how it is," a consulate representative told her as she walked away from the help desk at the Bayanihan Center. Guevarra is one of roughly 150 voters in Hong Kong whose names have gone missing from voters' lists — for reasons varying from failure to comply with this rule to incorrect spelling of their names. Agnes Paz, a poll watcher from the party-list group, Gabriela Women's Party, recalls a voter's ballot being rejected from PCOS machines during the first weekend of voting for being improperly filled out.

Many are also concerned that fraud will continue to happen the good old-fashioned way, questioning how these machines will help clean up a system already steeped in corruption. Even former President Fidel V. Ramos contended that, despite its security features, the new automated system could still be manually overridden — much like the automated toilet system in his office, he half-jested. But Smartmatic Asia-Pacific President César Flores assures that even with all measures in place, it takes more than just technology to ensure a successful election. "There are things that the technology cannot control," he reminds voters. "It's vigilance and commitment and responsibility combined that will make the system work."

As far as Comelec and Smartmatic officials are concerned, Hong Kong has already been a success. With the exception of two PCOS machines malfunctioning during the first weekend of voting (officials attributed this to "inclement weather"), the new automated system in Hong Kong has not encountered any major setbacks. Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal says that automation has sped up voting, reducing what once was a mind-numbing four-hour process with queues winding around the block to just ten minutes.

Back at the Bayanihan Center, Kuok rushes about the queues of voters, enthusiastically taking their photos. True to officials' words, there were no more than ten people in a given queue as voting was in full swing, and voters were whisked up to the polling areas upstairs within a few minutes of getting in line. Kuok's thumb is stained blue with indelible ink — an artifact of the old manual voting system retained for both security and symbolism — indicating that she had successfully cast her vote. "It's so heartwarming that people want to see this succeed," she says between snapshots, referring to the 100 volunteers who have signed up at the center to exercise their civic duty.

But these volunteers may have their work cut out for them. The past few Sundays have drawn over 2,000 voters each and, if history is any indicator, the next few weekends should also see a dramatic increase in voters. Consulate officials expect more than 7,000 voters for the last Sunday of voting — circumstances closer to the mad rush of Election Day in the Philippines, and perhaps a truer test of the system. And with May 10 looming, the Philippines will be keeping an eye on Hong Kong as a potential portent of what is to come.

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