Illiteracy and Elite-aracy

The recent ARMM elections also served as an experimental run for an automated 2010 National Elections.  The COMELEC used two different methods, each using two different machines, to facilitate the election process in the region.  One method used the Optical Mark Reader (OMR) and the other used the Direct Recording Equipment (DRE).  The first method is the system more familiar to the public.  It is the same system employed in aptitude examinations and Lotto.  The voter is given a card or a sheet of paper listing the candidate’s name and shades the oval or connects the broken line corresponding to the candidate of his choice.  The card or sheet is fed to a machine that counts the votes.  The second method is more direct as voters cast their votes by touching the name of a candidate on the screen of the machine networked to a system and the votes are immediately counted.  Reports concluded that, apart from a few minor technical problems (and the usual desperate attempts at ballot snatching), the ARMM elections was a success and the COMELEC assures us that we are ready for an automated election process in 2010. 

The initial optimism about automation would revolve around the improvement on the overall ease and efficiency of the whole voting and counting process, the increased speed and accuracy of results and the perceived improvement in the integrity of the election process due to the minimization of human participation (which says what about our presumptions of human nature?).  The glass is half full.  Automation is good (let us line the street with flowers and welcome its descent upon us mere citizens of the third world).  This optimism is probably well-founded but where is it all coming from?  Perhaps the excitement about this impending technological development of an age-old process comes from a bourgeois perspective, a capitalist or middle class idea that qualifies development through mechanization.  The lower/working class certainly does not want machines invading their work territory.  The evil contraptions will just put them out of work.  The capitalist wants efficiency but the laborer doesn’t want it at the expense of his wages.  I’m not saying automating the elections will put laborers out of work.  I am not parallelizing industry with the elections.  I am, likewise, not proposing that the legislation authorizing automated elections was elite legislation and was passed despite protests from the lower class (What do I know?  I don’t really watch the news).   My assertion is that, election automation probably has, at its core, bourgeois presumptions about the voting population and might (underline might) debilitate the right to suffrage of some citizens, especially those belonging to the lower class. 

I focus mainly on the presumption of literacy.  Literacy, which is a privilege for the lower class, yet is generally taken for granted by the upper and middle class.  When I use the term literacy here, I use it broadly as referring to conventional literacy – being able to read and write, and computer literacy – basic knowledge of computers.  Automating the election process presumes, at the very least, two things: (1) The voters know how to read as they will be reading the candidate names either on the pre-printed ballot or the computer screen, and (2) The voters have a working knowledge of the process of computing – for the OMR, that the machine will recognize only properly marked ballots; for the DRE that the machine will recognize touch as a vote and count the vote automatically.  The facts are these:  Not everyone is literate but everyone has the right to vote.  Both presumptions, in some way, circumvent the constitutional mandate that no literacy requirement should qualify the right to vote.  Although not unconstitutional, per se, the voting mechanics nevertheless assume that the voter has reached a certain level of education to be equipped with basics of automatic voting.  The second presumption also tends to emasculate the right to vote as: (1) in the case of using an OMR, an inappropriately marked ballot caused by ignorance of the rules may be discounted, and (2) in the case of using a DRE, machine voting might intimidate technologically inept voters causing them to forgo voting altogether.  Of course, these fears and considerations are not conclusively real nor entirely unworkable.  They can be overcome by proper instruction and adequate assistance, especially to those who are the least familiar and least exposed to computer technology.  Instruction should be expansive, complete and simple.  It is expansive when it reaches every voter in the country.  It is complete when it covers both the mechanics of voting and the nuances of processing such vote so that it can be counted as valid.   It is simple if it can be understood by someone with little or no education.  Assistance, on the other hand, should not in anyway amount to influence on the voter’s choice, otherwise, that would be an emasculation of the right to vote in another guise.

I am all for automating the elections (takes out “Go Automation 2010” banner) but I don’t want to see people making up excuses not to vote nor hear them say or see them act that they are reluctant to do so for fear of looking stupid or ignorant.  Nor do I want to see votes wasted because people did not fully understand or listen to or were not informed of the mechanics.  I especially do not want to see know-it-all election officers or volunteers or voters carrying their weight around, shouting and abasing those who display unfamiliarity with the new voting system.  Show some respect, brotha!

 

http://archive.inquirer.net/view.php?db=1&story_id=154293

http://www.comelec.gov.ph/modernization/technologies.html