LONE bidder Miru Systems Co. Ltd of South Korea and local partners Integrated Computer Systems, St. Timothy Construction Corp., and Centerpoint Solutions Technologies Inc. (Miru, for brevity) clinched the contract for the procurement project "Lease of Full automation System with Transparency Audit/Count (FASTrAC) for the 2025 National and Local Elections."

Bundled in the contract are:

– Election management system (EMS)

– 110,000 automated counting machines (ACM)

– 2,200 consolidation and canvassing system (CCS) servers/laptops and printers

– 104,345 ballot boxes

– paper for close to 74 million ballots, ballot printing and ballot verification.

How will Miru's automated election system (AES) change the voting in the 2025 national and local elections (NLEs)?

Miru's ACM is a dual election technology machine that includes both the "paper-based election system" and the "direct recording electronic (DRE) election system."

If the Commission on Elections (Comelec) implements the paper-based election system, much of the voting process will remain the same as in the last five NLEs where an AES was used.

Miru's ACM uses paper ballots with the same layout and design used in previous NLEs, as shown during the end-to-end demonstration conducted last Feb. 21, 2024. Voters will have to shade the ovals before the names of candidates of their choice per position/contest.

A bit of change in the process comes after the voter has inserted his ballot into the ACM. The ACM displays via the 13-inch screen the voter selections and whether there are over-votes or under-votes in particular contests. The voter has 20 seconds to decide whether to add to his choices in case of under-votes. If the voter so decides, the paper ballot may be returned by selecting the appropriate key. Over-votes can no longer be corrected.

If, on the other hand, the Comelec implements the DRE, voting time per voter is longer.

It was noted during the demonstration that what was displayed was the digital equivalent of the paper ballot. Each voter will have to scroll through the whole ballot to make his selections.

Each voter making his selections via the DRE will take time, which may result in a long queue per polling precinct.

In past NLEs, a maximum of 10 voters were allowed in the polling precinct to mark their ballots simultaneously. This is no longer possible.

After the voter submits his votes, displayed on screen is a summary of his selections and whether there are under-votes. The voter has 20 seconds to make a decision. The voter has the option to add to his selections in the under-voted positions by selecting the appropriate key. If he does, the whole ballot will be reset, and the voter will have to "mark" his ballot from the very beginning. This again can add to the time spent with the ACM.

Over-voting is no longer possible in the DRE, as the ACM is programmed to detect the maximum number of selections per position/contest.

In both technologies, at the lapse of 20 seconds, the voter's ballot is automatically cast, and the ACM prints the voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT).

Miru's ACM also comes with a receptacle for the VVPAT.

The ACM has privacy shields that protect the voter selections displayed on the 13-inch video display, ensuring the privacy of the votes.

On the top edge of the ACM video display is a camera, which raised the concern that the photos of the voters may be taken during the voting process. The Miru representative assured observers that the camera would not be active during the voting process.

Why is there a camera? This is where vote count transparency comes in. After the election returns have been transmitted to various servers, the VVPATs will be retrieved from the receptacle for public counting. Printed on the individual VVPAT is a QR code that contains the ballot identifier of the corresponding ballot image. The camera is used to scan the QR code on the VVPAT to retrieve the corresponding ballot image from the ACM storage. The ballot image can be displayed, and the votes therein counted. The ACM is used to do the verification count.

Following are some recommendations from the National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel):

1. Display each position/contest with the names of the candidates on an individual page. If there are more names that can be accommodated per page, allow voters to scroll through the page. Provide visual, audible or other prompts to guide the voter.

2. Provide a camera cover to ensure that the voter's photo is not taken during the voting process.

3. Encode the voter's choices into a QR code, which will be printed on the VVPAT. Namfrel has likewise recommended that the VVPAT be considered an accountable form or better that it be considered as the voter-verified ballot (VVB). Namfrel's recommendation provides the following advantages:

– The VVPAT was reviewed by the voter to ensure that his votes were properly captured.

– Each VVPAT contains a human-readable portion and a machine-readable portion, which can be publicly displayed.

– The decoded data from the QR code on the VVPAT can be publicly displayed.

– Watchers and observers can check if the data matches the human-readable portion of the VVPAT.

– Watchers and observers can scan the QR code on the VVPAT using their own devices, thereby capturing the votes and enabling watchers and observers to do their own count.

– The verification count can be done independently of the ACM.

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