What is so wrong with manual elections? Will automation automatically eliminate cheating?
Are the Japanese so stupid that they still have manual elections?
Are we so much smarter? Or, are we just Smartmatic-TIMed?
Check this video:
What is so wrong with manual elections? Will automation automatically eliminate cheating?
Are the Japanese so stupid that they still have manual elections?
Are we so much smarter? Or, are we just Smartmatic-TIMed?
Check this video:
FOO Law and Economics 
For as long as majority of our people are disinterested in the holding, the manner and the outcome of elections,(check out how many % ever votes)and the few who are interested, majority of which are more concerned about popular choice or name recall (the emotions), as well as what’s in it for them for voting (the gold), automated or manual really will not make any difference.
For as long as majority of candidates accept that election spending is 10 times to 100 times the stipulated legal election spending costs, then manual or automated elections, the concept of election cheating is part of the norm.
The Snap Elections already had automated counting at the PICC, yet the computer people on board walked out when they realized the blatant cheating going on and triggered the start of the discontent leading to the Edsa Revolution called “People Power”.
The ARMM elections was also automated and resulted in disarray due to the massive cheating and manipulations of the system in place.
Filipinos really have very short memories…some say only a 3-4 day time span.
I guess, we as a people are good in self-flagellation…similar to the “penitensiya” during the Holy Week in the provinces…asking the Almighty to bring in the miracles instead.
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Hi Lito, I sense frustration. But consider: You and I don’t have to vote if we can assure ourselves that those who DO vote are a representative sample of the “people’s will.” In other words, it is not important that all or even a big fraction of the citizens vote. It is good enough that the collective desire “comes out.”
I still believe that the adversarial manual count at the precincts is reasonably accurate. The problem is from the ER to the COC, where dagdag-bawas occurs. Here, automation is a good thing.
Of course, if the electorate is immature or “thinks poorly,” it is not quite correct for “the enlightened” to impose their will on the majority. We just hope that the rights of the minority get respected.
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Regarding percentage rate of voting, where do you source your numbers on voting rates in the Philippines? During the past 21 years average voting rates in the Philippines is 76.9 percent of registered voters. This is higher compared to many countries in Asia, Europe and USA.
We should do away with this attitude that ‘we are victims’. And we will have a chance of achieving that if each one starts with himself. “The journey of a thousand miles always start with a first step” and don’t put it off for tomorrow.
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But we are victims. Of Corporate Social Responsibility. Of government agencies who misuse their powers and have to be restrained time and again by the Supreme Court. Of our own myths about Social Justice, etc. And there is no hortatory “first step” for the self-deluded. Until he comes to grief, and then of course you have Bargaining and Acceptance, etc.
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1. FOO is far from what you think it is. a) FOO literally means “for once only” and is extensively used in Computing books and discussions as generic work meaning “for example”. We use it if we want to use a name for “C program” like “foo.c”, for “Shell” like “foo.sh” for Bourne shell, etc.Please see, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar .
2. Winnie the bear is “Winnie the pooh” not “Winnie the FOO”. Please see, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnipeg_the_Bear .
3. So, I was wondering where you got this idea of “FOO” for “Fooled Only Once”.
4. There are many reasons why we need to Automate Elections in the Philippines. But eliminating “cheating” is not a guaranteed outcome. But it will minimize cheating because it will eliminate many manual steps and physical handling of ballot boxes that present opportunity to cheat. It presents an easier way to review the steps in arriving at the final numbers and so if there’s cheating it can be identified with less time and effort. Also in the manual election procedures the ballot boxes are transferred physically from precincts to canvassing centers and we know from past this is the common area where cheating occurs by replacing the ballot boxes during transfers between these precincts and cavassing centers. I can enumerate many more.
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Welcome to FOO.. I hadn’t read Nassim Taleb when I named this site, but literally I was “fooling around” for names. In the dot.com go-go years, there was this Motley Fool thing, which has since fizzled out. The long and short of it is FOO is a self-definition here. Which in a sense makes me an intellectual property owner of sorts, as far as FOO can be said to be a “trade name.”
That cheating has been manual is a consequence of (1) we have a manual process; and (2) some people cheat. But to some extent these facts are independent. People cheat because they want to and can. If that is true, then a bad automated system can in fact be more prone to cheating than a good manual system. Alternatively, people who knew only how to cheat a manual count will adapt and learn to cheat an automated system (this makes me laugh because so many bloggers are into certain types of SEO, which is a form of automated cheating).
But recall the NRA argument – Guns don’t kill people; people do. If we seriously want to fix cheating we should focus on people, not machines.
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