A Better Wayto Implement

an OMR-based AES is a Simpler Way

Bill Torreswttorres@gmail.com

05 July 2010

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What’s this?

• Where I’m coming from: I believed from the start that OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) is the

appropriate technology for automating our country’s elections. The OMR machine/s must be located at the Voting Center so that the ballot

boxes need not be carried physically far from the location of the precincts. The OMR-based AES, being paper -based , is fully transparent ; if necessary , the

ballots can be manually counted and compared with the electronic records. The design/specification of the ballot is very important – more important than

the OMR machine. The AES’s ICT infrastructure together with the OMR hardware and its operating

system must be owned, rather than leased or rented, and can be shared by other wide-scale data gathering/monitoring applications.

• Your comments/suggestions are welcome – please email them to me at: wttorres@gmail.com

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Slides 1, 3-9 are the same slides I used in a brief presentation during a forum held at the AIM Conference Center on 05 July 2010 that reviewed the AES (automated election system) of the May 10, 2010 Elections in the Philippines. I did not show Slide 10 on the Ballot Box anymore – it’s not ICT!-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

”Solution Architecture”

Highlights

1. The Ballot

2. What the Voter does

3. What the OMR machine does

4. What the Server does

5. What the Telecom Network does

6. Additional Features

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The Ballot

• An official ballot should have the necessary security features that would be next to impossible to fake. (A fake ballot shall be automatically rejected by any OMR machine.)

• The ballot for national candidates is different from the ballot for local candidates.

• The ballot will allow the voter to enter the marks for the precinct number.

• The ballot will allow the voter to enter the marks corresponding to the candidates being selected.

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What the Voter does

• Registers to vote and gets an official ballot.

• Fills up the ballot.

• Places the ballot inside a locked translucent box.

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Note: This is as simple as I can think of -- for the voter. Also, a paper-based voting system , which this OMR-based AES is, makes it possible to familiarize the voters on how to properly fill up the ballots ahead of the election period through the use of a facsimile of the ballot – which can published in newspapers with nation-wide circulation, for example.

What the OMR machine does

• Accepts (or rejects) the ballots fed by the concerned authorized operator.

• Reads the ballot and counts up the number of votes per candidate.

• Provides an internal electronic record of the ballot together with the precinct number and the OMR machine's ID number. (The GPS coordinates at the voting center location would be nice to have!)

• Prints copies of the precinct tally of the votes for all national candidates as well as for all the local candidates at the municipality or city, the provincial and congressional district levels.

• Sends electronically to canvassing center/s the record comprising the precinct tally of the votes and the underlined items above.

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What the Server does

• Accepts (or rejects) the electronic records it receives.

• Aggregates the precinct tally of votes for all precincts per city or municipality, province, and nation, as the case may be. (The electronic records of the results should also include the identification number of the Server and the GPS coordinates of the Server location.)

• Prints copies of the results.

• Sends electronically copies of the results to the concerned servers.

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What the Telecom Network does

• Transmits the records of the precinct tally of votes from the concerned OMR machines at voting centers to the designated server/s of the canvassing centers.

• Transmits the electronic records of canvassing results from a server to other designated server(s).

• Provides security features including encryption and “time-stamping” of the records at the start and completion of the transmission.

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Additional features

• Each and every OMR machine is to be activated at the close of voting in all the precincts at each voting center.

• An OMR’s internal time clock is automatically set (and recorded each time this is done) in the time sequence of occurrence: (1) upon shipment of the OMR machine from the national depot, (2) each time it is activated, deactivated or reset, and, finally, (3) upon completion of a precinct’s operation.

• The OMR machines should be owned and operated by, say, a government-owned or -controlled organization – not COMELEC -- and their use shared and paid for by other enterprises (in education. health services, etc.). Similarly, Telecom services should be contracted for on an annual basis, based on anticipated or planned shared usage.

• The development and maintenance of the AES Application Software can and should be contracted to a Philippine–based company.

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Ballot Box Design• The box is made of translucent material with an open top and

a cover that can be locked onto the box.

• A horizontal slit (for inserting the ballots) is placed on one end near the top part of the box.

• A rectangular piece of opaque plastic material (opm) is placed inside the box which will rest on top of the inserted ballots in the normal position.

• At the middle and on the top part of the opm is securely fastened a vertical plastic rod (vpr) that passes through a hole on the middle part of the box cover. Around the vpr is a spiral spring that pushes the opm against the inserted ballots at the bottom of the box.

• To insert a ballot, the voter first lifts the vpr to the top of the box, then inserts the ballot and, when the just inserted ballot is inside the box, the voter slowly releases the vpr.

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