Proposed shift to voting by electors

Jude Josue Sabio .

WHEN we gained independence from the US, our democratic government system was patterned after that of the US. Like in the federal US system, our national officials are elected on a national scale. However, our system differs from the US in the manner of electing our national officials.  

In the US federal system, the President and Vice President are elected by electors who are chosen across the country and form what is called an electoral college. In our electoral system, the President and Vice President are elected by the people at large.

As we know by painful experience, this system of direct voting is very cumbersome and unmanageable. This is proven by the perennial suspicions of massive cheating in the earlier manual voting, which prompted a shift to an electronic system.  

But this electronic system is even more prone to electoral sabotage and fraud. As indicated by the Marcos electoral protest, and also by the delay for transmission of eight hours in the last election, a glitch gives rise to serious suspicions of massive electoral fraud.

This is supported by reports of 600 to 800 voting counting machines bogging down in the recent elections, not to mention more than 1,000 flash cards becoming useless on the day of the election.

Of course, Smartmatic is being blamed as responsible for these irregularities.  It is suggested that the Commission on Elections should scrap Smartmatic and look for another system provider in the hope that elections would be free of fraud.

In the utltimate analysis, the only reason we are resorting to electronic voting is that we conduct national elections by direct voting.  We can do away with electronic voting altogether only if we scrap direct voting by the people.  

It is ironic that while the founding fathers of the US Constitution chose democracy, they did not choose direct voting. Instead, they provided for election by electors. Accordingly, since the founding of the US, their President and Vice President have been elected by their electoral college.

Although there is also a so-called popular vote in the US that is done simultaneously with the electoral vote, it is by and large a useless exercise, because it is the result of the electoral voting that determines the outcome.  President Trump lost in the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, but still he became President because he won in the electoral voting.

It is high time that we consider the wisdom and practicality of direct voting.  If we have followed the democratic system of the US, there is no reason why we should not also follow its long-standing electoral voting which is, after all, a central feature of such democratic system.

The US system shows that even if voting is done by the electoral college, the fundamental concept of democracy as the rule of the people is still maintained.

In light of the continuing realities, it is imperative that we put an end to direct voting.  This proposed shift is even made more imperative by the need to save on the huge cost of conducting an election on a national scale, which certainly our poor country cannot afford. 

In conjunction with this proposal, Senators should be elected not on a national level anymore, but by regions, just like in the US where senators are elected in every state. Also, we should not follow the popular vote being done in the US.

(Jude Josue L. Sabio is a lawyer from Misamis Oriental.)