Hybrid elections? There needs to be a law for that, Garcia said

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) said on Monday that a law is needed to implement a hybrid system of elections in the country.

Comelec chair George Garcia said this regarding election watchdog Kontra Daya’s suggestion of a hybrid election, referring to the conduct of manual voting with an automated transmission, amid woes in the printing of ballots for the midterm polls.

“There needs to be a law to have a hybrid system of elections,” Garcia said in an interview at Palacio del Gobernador.

Garcia noted that the Republic Act (RA) 9369 or the Election Automation Law of 2007 states that the Comelec shall only conduct an automated election system from 2010 afterward.

Earlier, Kontra Daya convenor Danilo Arao proposed the idea of returning to manual voting with automated transmission, following the Comelec’s decision to discard six million ballots for the upcoming midterm polls, resulting in a P132 million loss.

“If the ballots are just simply blank spaces for allotted slots, for example for senators, there would only be 12 blank items there. For mayor – one, vice mayor – one, party-list – one,” Arao told INQUIRER.net over the phone on Monday.

“If we do that, it would be possible to continuously [print the ballots] whatever incoming decisions there may be on the part of the Supreme Court,” the University of the Philippines professor added.

READ: Group urges Comelec to return to manual voting to avoid ballot wastage 

Arao noted that a hybrid election would not violate the law since there is still an automated component to it.

But Garcia disagreed with this interpretation. “It (the law) states that starting 2010 [elections], all national and local elections in the Philippines should be automated,” he said.

“Despite the interpretation of others that it is permissible, the law is called an ‘automated election law,’ it was not referred to as a ‘hybrid election law,'” he added.