How many hours does it take to guarantee a credible May 10 polls?

Groups pushing for a parallel manual count said it takes only three additional hours.

“According to our time and motion studies, the additional time for this parallel manual count will only be about three hours,” Augusto Lagman, lead convenor of the TransparentElections.org, said.

This, he said, is for the positions of president, vice-president and any of these three local elective positions-governor, congressman and mayor.

The group even demonstrated to the media how easy it is to do a parallel manual count using five ballots.

In the same exercise, it took them only 12 seconds to read a ballot.
Simeon Marcelo of the Philippine Bar Association, for his part, explained the difference between the group’s proposal to the old manual system.

“What the Board of Elections Inspectors (BEIs) are going to count only are the ballots that the PCOS machines read. This is to check if what the PCOS read is correct or not,” he said.

“That will only take a second because you are going to read only the names,’ added Marcelo.

He is also convinced that there’s still enough time for the Comelec to print the needed forms for the parallel manual count especially since the National Printing Office (NPO) already finished printing the more than 50 million ballots.

“We have more than enough time to print the materials for full manual count for 100 percent of the precincts…what they said that there’s no more time is not true because all the printers at the NPO are now free,” said Marcelo.

The group appealed to the Comelec to listen to their proposal not only because it is rational but it is also doable.

Monday, the group will go to the Comelec office in Intramuros, Manila to submit their open letter to the poll body.

Malacañang has called on the public to stick with the decision to automate the national and local elections next month and take part in ensuring its success.

Deputy Presidential Spokesman Gary Olivar frowned on calls to hold a parallel manual count during the automated polls, saying it was unnecessary, impracical, and might only create confusion in the election results.

Olivar, speaking on government radio, said the nation cannot afford to shift from one voting method to another on a whim with only two weeks before the highly anticipated democratic exercise. A law on automated elections was signed a few years ago to do away with manual counting of votes often marred by charges of fraud.

“In the past, we had manual elections but many still complained of cheating. They said we should pursue automation. Now that we are automated, they are saying we should return to manual. We can’t keeping changing our position just like that,” Olivar said.