What The Philippines Can Learn From South Korea's Election Transparency

It's no secret that the Philippine elections are just around the corner for 2019. The recent problem of the Smartmatic este Dumbmatic deal with COMELEC is riddled with impunity and fraud. It's crazy for the Yellows to demand #endimpunity while they love a culture of impunity at the same time. So why complain that the ouster of Lourdes Sereno by quo warranto of the Supreme Court was the beginning of impunity while evidence of cheating by the Yellows against Bongbong Marcos are now more visible than ever such as the 25% shaded ballots when the normal instruction is to shade them at 100% or the machines won't read them.

Some people want to end electronic elections in favor of manual ones. However, do you realize that some advanced countries do get elections done electronically. A good example is South Korea in its implementation of electronic voting. So how effective is South Korea in doing so? Here's what Asian Foundation has to say about South Korean voting practices that actually show where the Philippines is wrong aside from getting machines from a VENEZUELAN company:

At the counting station (the one I visited was in a large auditorium) the sealed boxes are stored in plain view until they are ready to be counted, at which point, the box is opened and dumped out on a large table, where a team unfolds and stacks the ballots – in full view of the party agents. The ballots are then placed in a machine that scans and sorts the ballots by party chosen. When the count for any party reaches 100, a light comes on and that stack is pulled and bound with a rubber band. Any ballots the machine cannot read because of smudging or double-marks are sorted to a separate pile for human review to determine validity.

After all the ballots for a station are sorted they are counted. At this stage, one can easily riffle through a stack of ballots and see (those red marks) that they are all marked for the same party. The stack is then fed into a ballot counter that looks just like a currency counter you might see in a bank. The process is fast, but slow enough that you can see the LED number go up for each ballot counted, confirming the machine count. Finally, the total for each candidate or party is tallied and recorded.

The focus of the NEC/A-WEB program was on polling and counting processes, but we did also have one session on campaign financing. During the campaign period, political finance is tightly monitored and controlled. In an effort to level the playing field for less wealthy candidates, the amounts that can be donated to or spent by candidates and parties are limited by law. Financial disclosure is required of candidates and their close relatives, and regulations define acceptable means and media for campaigning.

The South Korean elections show two things the Philippine elections lack for quite some time -- tight security and transparency. What can be seen is that South Korea's voting system uses both manual and electronic counting which may greatly reduce the risk of Hocus PCOS incidents. Just imagine how much sabotage can be revealed if any invalid ballots were then separated and counted for human review were done. Having these sealed boxes stored in plain view would make it very difficult for saboteurs to do their job.

The Philippines before 2019 should now do tight monitor and control of the finances of ALL candidates. The problem with Philippine elections is a lack of accountability of its candidates. A good example is until now that nobody can explain where the Liberal Party or better renamed as the Libertard Party got their funds from. Should South Korea's monitoring and demand for financial disclosure for everyone then imagine how much stolen wealth can be traced back. Unfortunately, this is something that the Yellow fanatics don't want to have, right?