Approximately mid-July, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will have to start printing ballot papers for the 2017 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections. That means spending money, not just for the printing itself, but for a whole lot of other associated costs. These related expenditures include, among other things, procuring paper, hiring additional manpower and so on. In other words, by mid-July, we will have committed to actually spending for the elections. I’d like to say “irreversibly”, but that wouldn’t be accurate. Quite literally, if on the day before the polls, the law were signed postponing elections, everything would grind to a halt. Of course, if that were to happen, then billions of pesos would be lost. Shame.
The thing is, the Comelec can’t let up on its preparations in anticipation of a law that might not come. Nor can the Comelec simply cancel elections because a number of politicians have come out in support of the idea. Nope. As far as the Comelec goes, if the elections are called for in the relevant laws, then they have to be prepared for. As it has been since all this talk of postponement began, the ball is in the legislature’s court.
In the meantime, the Barangay and SK elections aren’t the only elections being prepared for. Groundwork for the 2019 elections must be laid now. And beginning on Tuesday, the 13th of June, the wheels have started to turn.
On that date, the new members of the Comelec Advisory Council (CAC)—the body of experts created by the automation law to, well, advise the Comelec on automation—took their oath of office, together with the new members of the Technical Evaluation Committee—also created by the automation law, to certify that “the automated election system, including its hardware and software components, is operating properly, securely and accurately.”
Working together, these two bodies ensure that the most appropriate technology is used for elections, and that the technology actually used meets the accuracy and security standards mandated by the law. And no, it’s not too early for them to start their work.
Consider all the things that need to be done, in the matter of automating the elections alone: the CAC, first of all, needs to come up with a technology recommendation, which will inform the Comelec on what the CAC thinks is the best suited election tech for 2019. Is the country ready for paperless elections? Can locally developed tech be used? Or do we continue down essentially the same path we took in 2010, 2013 and 2016? These questions and more will be answered by the CAC recommendation. After receiving the CAC’s thoughts on the matter, the Comelec intends to take the question to election stakeholders. Since these consultations will span the entire country, you can expect that it will take some time for the Comelec to gather all the input it needs to come up with the final decision on how the elections of 2019 will be automated. Then, and only then, will the nuts-and-bolts preparations actually kick off. If all goes according to plan, that will put us approximately 20 months away from May 2019.
That might seem like a lot of time, but then again, time is deceptive when viewed from a distance. It’s only when you start actually using it up that you come to the often shocking realization that you don’t have quite as much of it as you’d want—whether you’re talking about preparing for the midterm elections or about scuttling the Barangay and SK polls.