EDITORIAL
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is in the thick of preparations for the 2025 midterm national elections and Chairman George Erwin Garcia has encouraged all Filipinos who are qualified to vote to register or go to their local Comelec offices to check if their registration is current and there would be no kinks come election day.
The Comelec has announced that registration of voters is still ongoing and will end on Sept. 30, 2024. “There are a few months left, so there is still time to apply for registration,” Garcia said.
The poll body earlier said it has already processed more than 3.3 million new voter applicants in the ongoing voter registration for the 2025 midterm polls. They expressed hope that more people will register for online and physical voting.
It is interesting to note that the preparations for the conduct of the 2025 midterm elections are divided into two priority areas: the usual physical voting in the country, and the new but potentially workable experiment on internet or online voting for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) based abroad.
While many are familiar with the way the poll body is conducting the elections, from the daily registration of voters during the registration period to the election itself and the proclamation of winners, this pivot towards online voting is new and untested in the Philippines.
The Comelec has started the trials for the use of online voting for certain groups of voters, such as the OFWs and other Filipinos living abroad. This is what other countries such as France, Panama, Pakistan and Armenia. Several local elections in Canada and Australia are doing the same. But Baltic state Estonia beats all others, because it remains the only country in the world in which any citizen can cast a remote electronic vote during elections to their national parliament, to local government councils, or to the parliament of the European Union.
In the Philippines, the use of the internet in actual voting has not yet been approved by Congress, despite the requests made by Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia to the legislators in 2022.
However, the Comelec en banc decided to go ahead and they approved online voting, citing a provision in Republic Act 9189 which allows the Comelec to “study the use of electronic mail, internet, or other secured networks” for absentee voting. They also cited RA 10590, or “The Overseas Voting Act of 2013,” which amended the previous law. The latter provides that the commission “may explore other more efficient, reliable, and secure modes or systems, ensuring the secrecy and sanctity of the entire process, whether paper-based, electronic-based, or internet-based technology, or such other latest technology available …”
Also under Republic Act No. 9189 or “The Overseas Absentee Voting Act of 2003,” registered overseas Filipinos are allowed to vote in person at the Philippine embassy, consulate, or other Comelec-accredited polling place in their host country, or mail their ballot to the same foreign service offices.
We note that it is hard for some 2 million OFWs abroad to find time to vote personally. They would need to be absent from work for one to two days, as our embassies and consulates are far away from their places of work, and there are even countries where we do not have an embassy. This is the reason for allowing them to vote by mail, a mode which also did not stick to Filipinos abroad.
“Why are not so many of them voting personally or by mail? Maybe they need another mode,” Chairman Garcia said. Perhaps the answer is electronic voting.
The Comelec has announced that once internet voting for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) next year proves to be successful, this voting system will also be adopted locally to benefit the country’s elderly population. Garcia said if nothing goes wrong with the online voting, it would be good to also implement this in the local scene.
“If this internet voting for OFWs proves to be successful, we can also do it domestically for our senior citizens, persons with disability and pregnant women,” Garcia said in his message during the online voting and counting system training held recently in Busan, South Korea.
It is a fact that both the young and the elderly are now also adept at using modern gadgets. The Comelec chief correctly noted that senior citizens, given the free time they have after retirement and having the financial capacity to purchase, have also joined the flow towards digitization of everyday activities. Garcia noted that many senior citizens now are updated in terms of technology. You can see them using and playing with their cellphones most of the time.
Garcia emphasized that what is important is that the integrity of the system is upheld.
“The condition is for the internet voting system to be protected, highly reliable and secured. And we can guarantee you these things,” he said.
You can assure that we will hold Chairman Garcia responsible on his word.
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