Senator Imee Marcos on Sunday said she sees a need to conduct a hybrid elections—part manual and part automated—during national and local polls to ensure transparency.
Marcos, who chairs the Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms and People’s Participation, said there is a need for voters to see what happens to his or her ballot when it is placed inside the counting machine and the votes are processed.
“Naniniwala ako na kailangan ay i-hybrid...Kasi wala tayong talaan, wala tayong ebidensya na hawak kapag may protesta sa pagkakaiba ng ER (election returns) sa presinto at sa city o munisipyo na nakikita ng tao (I believe we need to conduct hybrid polls...because we don’t have a tally, or evidence that we can use if we want to protest the difference in the ERs in any precinct in the city or municipality that the people can see),” Marcos said in an interview over Radio DZBB.
“I think that’s a good way to generate public confidence,” she pointed out.
She pointed out a lot of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) have complained during the last May 9, 2022 elections that the names of the candidates voted yielded different results in the receipts.
“So there’s a level of distrust kung puro papel machine ang generated, ang papel na pinanghahawakan (if we only use machines generating paper receipts),” Marcos stressed.
She also said there are still many complaints regarding defective vote counting machines.
Marcos pointed out that even some highly developed and technical countries have resorted to manual counting due to the lack of physical evidence of actual count.
“May ilang bansa na bumalik sa manual count kahit na sila ay highly developed dahil walang pinanghahawakan na actual count na ebidensya (There are some countries that went back to manual count even though they are highly developed because they have no actual evidence of the official count),” she said.
Marcos also said she plans to expand early voting for indigenous groups, senior citizens, persons with disabilities and pregnant women.
She also said she would look into the pros and cons of holding the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections this year.