Comelec to have independent party assess 2010 polls

To avoid bias, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Friday said it will be asking an independent party to conduct a review of the country's first nationwide automated elections. Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said that they plan on forming a panel composed of "international experts" who have a "fresh set of eyes" to review and assess the recent polls. "The objective is assessment not fault-finding... we have enough fault finders, we need an objective assessment," Jimenez told reporters in an interview. Jimenez noted, however, that this is different from the Comelec's own post-election evaluation wherein they supposedly have a "breakdown" of what really happened during the elections. He said that the independent party's assessment would first define some standards, like the speed and accuracy of the election results or the ease of voter experience, and assess the country's elections based on that. He said this would be unlike the poll body's evaluation wherein they will look into what went wrong, like why some Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) did not know what to do in one situation, or why some equipment were not delivered on time. He said the Comelec would find out who came up with the best solution to a specific problem and then discuss it. "You take (the) best practices from within the commission," he said. Jimenez said both the outgoing and incoming presidents would be provided with copies of the reports. He said that this will help the Congress do "what we need them to do," which is improve the electoral framework for the next polls. On Thursday, poll watchdog Automated Election System Watch (AES) Watch had already called on the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee (JCOC) to forrn an independent body to assess the automated elections. "The said panel (should) be constituted with competent individuals of established probity and mandated with proper and adequate support to conduct a thorough review and evaluation of the technical, procedural, and other aspects of the AES used in May 2010," said the group in a letter to the JCOC. The automated polls were marred with glitches, most notably the failure of some Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines to accurately read some votes a few days before the elections. This forced the Comelec to pull out and replace all the compact flash (CF) cards inside the voting units already deployed all over the country. — Kimberly Jane Tan/RSJ, GMANews.TV