Activity Report on the National Conference on Citizen Electoral Monitoring
The Computer Professionals’ Union (CPU), alongside the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) and other project partners of Project 30-30, organized Safeguarding the People’s Vote: A National Conference on Citizen Electoral Monitoring last Saturday, April 24 at the University Hotel in the University of the Philippines – Diliman. Around 60 participants hailing from different parts of the ICT community – IT students and professionals, New Media practitioners, and activists – converged to share experiences, campaigns and technologies related to monitoring the first ever Automated Election System (AES) implemented in the Philippines.
Director Leopoldo Virtucio of event partner UP Geology Alumni Association gave the welcoming remarks, congratulating all participants for engaging in this effort to safeguard and democratize the 2010 automated elections.
The first speaker, Prof. Bobby Tuazon of CenPEG, dissected the legal and political context of the AES and the need to implement safeguards and stringent electoral monitoring. Next was Fred Pascual of the AES Watch, an umbrella group of various election watchdogs, non-government organizations, and institutions monitoring the technical preparations and implementation of the AES. He expounded on the vulnerabilities and proposed safeguards for the elections by explaining the STAR (System Trustworthiness, Accountability and Reliability) score card.
He was followed by Renato Reyes, Jr. of the watchdog group Kontra Daya, who elaborated on the role of the IT community and even ordinary citizens in monitoring the elections. He stressed the need to equip non-voters and non-pollwatchers with the means to help in the efforts to guard the polls.
Electoral monitoring technologies were presented afterwards. Annaleah Escresa of the Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER, Inc.) explained the mobile SMS-based fraud reporting system they are implementing for the Workers’ Electoral Watch (WE-Watch). Brian Tan Seng of 98Labs, Inc. demonstrated Electionexchange.ph, a vote aggregating and mapping tool.
Aileen Apolo of Google Philippines shared some analyses on the AES implementation and shared about Google’s precinct mapper. Rick Bahague next explained how Votereportph.org works, a multi-platform incident reporting tool that uses a free and open source GIS crowdsourcing tool linked to SMS, online web form, and twitter reports.
Finally, citizen journalism (CJ) efforts were presented. Representatives from New Media and Alternative media outfits such as Tonyo Cruz’ 100araw.com, Noemi Lardizabal-Dado of Blogwatch.ph and Kenneth Guda of Pinoy Weekly narrated their conceptual frameworks and monitoring efforts.
100araw.com’s Tonyo Cruz cited how there is a growing number of internet users in the Philippines, with more than 12 million having access to facebook, pointing out that, in fact, the Causes application is the 2nd most popular app in FB. Meanwhile,
The activity was concluded with a closing statement from partner organization CPDG’s chairperson Giovanni Tapang, stressing the necessity for collaboration and volunteerism in mobilizing the ICT community to guard against electoral fraud and address the expected technical problems. Participants then pledged to unite under the call for vigilance, seeking to “enjoin the entire IT community to have a proactive role in collaboratively monitoring the elections” and to “use our knowledge in technology and communication to advance the politics of transformative change.”
Participants were eager to support this initiative to unite the ICT community under the campaign for a safe, transparent and credible elections, immediately huddling in a caucus over the snacks, planning and pooling together technologies and efforts in monitoring the AES.
