THE CAMPAIGN

First-World Techniques, Third-World Setting

The X-Men: The Story of Activists-Turned-Political Consultants

With a Little Help from (U.S.) Friends

Campaigning, Filipino Style

Spinning the News

Half-Truths in Advertising

Songs in the Key of Politics

PHOTO ESSAY

The Presidency as Image

ELECTION PERSPECTIVES

Elections are like Water

Between Tinsel and Trapo

The Enigma of the Popular Will

VOTER'S VOICE

First-time Voter

Regular Voter

Non-Voter

Hope and Elections in Payatas

THE LIGHTER SIDE

Making (Non)Sense of Politics

Election Lexicon

Quickie Quiz for the Politically Insane

AMONG THE candidates — national and local — Raul Roco seems to be running the most technologically driven campaign. In part, that may be because young professionals and students make up the backbone of his supporters. Aside from having a growing cell phone-based network, Katropa boasts of a website that also serves as a venue for online organizing efforts to expand Roco's army of volunteers, especially among the youth. Since December last year, about 500 people have signed up with the group, expressing support for the former education secretary and volunteering for his campaign activities.

	With sites like Katropa.com, the Roco campaign seems to be the most technologically driven among the presidentiables.

Roco volunteer groups based overseas also have their online presence, the passage of the Overseas Absentee Voting Act providing an impetus for their Internet-based campaigning. The groups, which are under the Volunteers for Roco Global (V4R Global) umbrella, rely more on electronic-mailing lists and discussion boards to reach out to fellow overseas Filipinos, as well as to disseminate information about latest events relating to the Roco campaign and scheduled events in their areas. Mobile application provider Chikka's instant messenger service, which offers free text messaging from one's PC to any mobile phone anywhere in the world, has also proved very handy for these groups.

Alyansa has also ventured into online campaign fund-raising, though probably not on such a massive scale waged by then U.S. presidential aspirant Howard Dean before he bowed out of the Democratic Party primaries. Via the popular online payment service Paypal, Roco's overseas sites are asking for donations from a dollar to $250 to finance campaign activities abroad and in the Philippines. For a minimum contribution of $15, a donor gets a VCD presentation of Roco's "Message of Hope" tour in the United States and Canada.

Back here in the Philippines, youth volunteers are being tapped to take Roco's place in remote rural communities that he cannot visit personally. Tan says the volunteers will be armed with donated laptops and VCDs to introduce Roco and the Alyansa campaign platform to the communities. Another strategy is to get volunteers to access the campaign website and download materials — including a variety of campaign jingles in MP3 format and the Alayansa's "Huwag Ipanakaw ang Bukas" MTV — from a local cybercafι for reprinting and distribution among the villagers.

The Roco camp is no stranger to a high-tech-heavy campaign. Back in 1998, the then senator was the more technology-friendly among his fellow presidential candidates, and made the Internet an integral part of his campaign. His website, which earned a "Featured Site of the Day" citation from Ken Ilio's Filipino links site, Tanikalang Ginto, was the only regularly updated candidate's site, carrying daily press releases on his campaign trail. It also contained a detailed party philosophy, vision and program under a Roco presidency not found in the other candidates' sites, and even featured an interactive chat program for online users.

Today, the only other national candidate waging an online campaign is Senator Panfilo 'Ping' Lacson, though his sites — www.pinglacson.ph, www.888.ph, www.pl.888.ph — are not on a par with the sophistication with online tools exhibited by those of Roco. Still, that doesn't necessarily mean Lacson's camp doesn't appreciate the wonders of the Web. Long before the filing of candidacy of the presidential bets, his wards managed to invade online forums discussing Philippine politics, engaging people in a spirited, though often acrimonious, debate on the virtues of a Lacson presidency.

With official websites — www.op.gov.ph, www.gov.ph — at her disposal, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's campaign handlers probably figured they have no need for a campaign-oriented site. Technology-wise though, the president's personal machinery is reportedly benefiting from the heavy emphasis on databases involving voter demographic data and information analytics — something to be expected with veteran political strategist Ronaldo Puno at the helm. One insider also says that campaign monitoring is done through SMS, with an assigned number for reporting on the status of campaign activities and for relaying requests to be acted upon by a national campaign council.

S I D E B A R
Voting without Much Buzz

SO MUCH for cutting-edge technology in Halalan 2004. For the more important aspects of the electoral process — from voter registration, voting, vote counting, to canvassing-touches of modernity have been as elusive as replies with substance from candidates. Yet for the most part, the problem stems not from a lack of available technological solutions.

To begin with, there is Mega Data Corp.'s Botong Pinoy, a comprehensive computerized voting system encompassing the three major phases of the elections: registration, voting, and tabulation. Pilot tested in council elections in universities, it has proven to be an effective safeguard against fraud and manipulations like dagdag-bawas. Those who have tried it attest to its impressive performance.

The system is an offshoot of a 1998 project where Mega Data teamed up with Polistrat International and the National Press Club to computerize the election returns. But the project was implemented only in the first district of Makati for lack of manpower.

For the registration, Botong Pinoy recommends facial and fingerprint biometrics. Voting would be done using touchscreens by pointing at the face or name of candidates while being guided by voice prompts. In the tabulation phase, security features as electronic keys and an encryption method similar to online credit card transactions will guard against tampering of the votes. Results can be determined within a day.

In 1993, though, Operation MODEX (Modernizing Philippine Elections) firmed up the direction that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) modernization initiative would take. At the time, possible technologies considered appropriate to the local setting included the optical mark sense and punchcard systems. The Comelec team eventually recommended the former — involving an automated vote-counting machine that scans paper ballots with its built-in optical mark reader — as best suited for Philippine elections. The system is much like marking ovals corresponding to a student's answer on the National Secondary Aptitude Test or NSAT answer sheet.

This preference for the mark sense system, which is stipulated in the automation law, outrightly disqualified Botong Pinoy from participating in the bidding. Says Jasper Soon, Mega Data's business development officer: "Even the Comelec officials were impressed by our system. But since they are bound by law to use the system until 2116, we cannot do anything about it. We will just have to try to market this in the U.S."

The first time a computerized election system was used in official polls in this country was in September 1996, during the elections in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Forty-two ballot-counting machines were deployed to get the job done. The Comelec was able to proclaim the winning candidates for district-level, regional assemblymen only after 48 hours. The winning governor and vice governor were proclaimed after 72 hours.

As early as the May 1998 elections, the Election Automation Act of 1997 called for the use of ballot-counting machines to tally votes at the precinct level and to consolidate the municipal, provincial and national results. In 2001, voters were supposed to use ballots with preprinted names of candidates instead of writing them down one by one.

None of these ever happened. In the 1998 polls, the automated system was used only in the ARMM provinces of Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi. Even then, glitches in defective printed ballots that the machine failed to read marred the elections in five municipalities in Sulu.

This May, chances are vote-counting in most places will again revert to manual mode after the Supreme Court recently voided the P1.3-billion contract won by a Korean firm-led consortium that would have allowed the use of automated counting machines. The court decision zeroed in on the irregularities that attended the bidding process, which favored MegaPacifc eSolutions.

A year earlier, the Supreme Court had similarly struck down the Comelec's controversial tamper-proof voters' ID system, or the Voter Registration and Identification System (VRIS), for an anomalous bidding process that awarded the contract to Photokina Marketing Corp.

The Comelec did manage to develop and use what it called the FindPrecinct.com in the May 2001 polls to assist voters from Metro Manila and key urban areas in locating their voting precincts. The poll body is said to be contemplating a revival of the service using SMS this time. The Comelec has also announced that the ARMM, as well as Manila and Taguig, will have automated elections despite the Supreme Court ruling voiding the MegaPacific contract. — Alecks P. Pabico