THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) is embarking on the first-ever voter-education campaign that will use online social networking as its backbone, Comelec spokesman James Jimenez told technology reporters recently.

Speaking at a press briefing in Makati City, Jimenez said he believes the new Comelec campaign “is probably the first of its kind in the world. We are going to be using every communication channel we can—radio, television, print media and social networking on the Internet—to get our two key messages across.”

He said they are using the Internet because “it is the most persistent medium for good information dissemination. You may miss a newspaper article or broadcast report, but what is published on the Internet stays there for a long time. It also provides ease of access and is an effective force multiplier and it will figure very, very prominently in our voter-education campaign.”

Jimenez said that despite the low broadband penetration in the Philippines—only about 14 million of 96 million Filipinos have access to the Internet at any given time—“the sense of ownership [of a concept or concepts] is strongest in cyberspace. We see it [online], we like it, we own it.”

In the coming days, the Comelec will launch two websites, a social-networking site targeting young voters called www.bagongbotante.ph, or “the new voter.”

For the more mature or serious voter, Comelec is launching www.ibanangayon.ph or “it is different now,” a website that will carry “more serious content that signals the first nationwide computerized selection as a reboot for everyone, one that uses a new system that seeks to reinvigorate the sense of excitement we all felt when we first went to vote,” Jimenez said.

As with many government offices and the country’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the Comelec is finding renewed value in viral, community marketing, with the Internet making the “word-of-mouth” spread of information more accurate, speedy and clear.

“We will be harnessing our online presence to enhance the offline education campaign using traditional media and town-hall meetings,” he added.

The voter-education effort, Jimenez said, “Will proceed on two fronts: regional and national.”

The regional voter-education campaign will prominently feature road shows as the principal means of delivering education to the voters. These road shows will involve a public demonstration of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines that are part of the Automated Election System (AES) that voters will use in casting their ballots for the 2010 national elections.”

Jimenez and Smartmatic Inc.’s Venezuelan spokesman, Cesar Flores, demonstrated how the AES works for reporters present at the briefing.

The Comelec and its partners in the effort to modernize the way the Philippines’ elections are conducted have taken “all the precautions we can think of,” Jimenez said.

“We have special paper for the ballots, which comes with a bar code—this means that voters need only shade the ovals corresponding to the names of the candidates they choose, which will be printed on the ballot already. However, voters should not over-vote—they may only select one candidate for president and vice president and only the number of party-list representatives they may select, or their ballot will be invalidated and they will not get another chance to vote. Once spoiled, the ballot is invalidated and they may not have another one.”

The AES demonstration showed that making an “x” or check mark in the oval invalidates the ballot, so voters must be careful to follow instructions carefully when voting.

Each AES system comes with unique precinct identification, Jimenez said, which indicates which precinct the system is assigned to and how many registered voters there are for that precinct, “so there should be some safeguard against flying voters hard-wired into the AES, although we, at Comelec, still have to make sure we have updated the voters’ list,” a task that is made difficult he said by many factors.

“If a voter dies just before the elections, chances are his name will still be on the list unless the next of kin or family friends inform the Comelec. We would appreciate that kind of help in keeping the voters’ list up-to-date, if it comes.”

Flores, for his part, said the AES is “completely auditable,” adding that Smartmatic and its Philippine partner, TIM Inc., “will not automate elections in any country if it will not be auditable or recountable. The [PCOS] machine transmits [election returns] via three servers, Comelec’s central server and two backup servers. The data will be transmitted over the Philippines’ telecommunications network”—Smart, Globe, Sun, Red Mobile and PLDT phone lines.

“We will use whatever network is available to us at any given location to transmit the vote count in real-time and we will publish the election returns as they come on the Internet,” Jimenez said.

Such real-time data streaming, he added, “is another safeguard against poll fraud. Such results cannot be manipulated without leaving a data trail. This is where we will bring cloud computing into the national polls.”

Each AES, Flores said, “is stand-alone. It is not connected to any other machines except for two minutes, when it is transmitting the election returns over the [Comelec] network. These election returns will also be transmitted simultaneously to the dominant administration and opposition parties, as well as the [Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting or PPCRV and the National Movement for Free Elections or Namfrel].”

“The worst-case scenario we have simulated,” Jimenez said, “is that these machines go belly-up and won’t function. We have 80,000 machines and 2,000 more in reserve and strategically located so we can easily replace a malfunctioning machine and reduce downtime to just two hours from the time a decision to replace the faulty AES is made, including transport and installation of the replacement machine.”

These are 80,130 precincts, according to the Comelec’s new set of logistics for the use of these machines, and one AES is assigned to each precinct. Each AES is secured with a password-encrypted universal service bus (USB) flash drive without which the machine will not boot up.

Each AES is also equipped with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system that will keep the machine running on batteries for 16 hours, about five hours over the time given for voters to cast their ballots, which is 11 hours.

The machines are still being brought in from China, where they are being manufactured, Flores said, and they will be tested “as they are delivered. The source code is still being customized, but I believe there will be sufficient time for a thorough source-code review to be conducted before election day.”

He said the United State-based software-testing company tapped to conduct the source-code review, SysTest Labs, “is confident they can do this software testing thoroughly and in time for the May 10 polls.” 

The original source code, Jimenez said, “Is in escrow at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.”

The entire computerized election system covering all precincts nationwide will operate over a virtual private network protected by 128-bit encryption key, a reliable form of encryption for secure online-data transmission.