In May 2010, the Philippines will hold concurrent presidential, national and local elections. These elections present a considerable challenge for the Electoral Commission of the Philippines (COMELEC) as they mark the shift towards an automated election system; in the past, elections were largely a manual process. In an effort to further sharpen their electoral skills ahead of this change, two senior COMELEC officials traveled to Mexico in August 2009 to exchange information and ideas with 24 Mexican electoral authorities and international experts.

The implementation of international training activities for foreign electoral commissions in Mexico, which began taking place in 2004, was brought about through a joint initiative by the Federal Election Institute of Mexico (IFE), the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (TRIFE) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). As a partner in this initiative, IFES (in this case the Americas and Asia divisions) acts as a bridge to bring electoral commissions from all over the world to exchange experiences and receive training with Mexican electoral authorities. These exchanges provide foreign electoral commissions the opportunity to learn from Mexico’s advanced electoral system, one of the most sophisticated in the world. In turn, the foreign commissions provide IFE the opportunity to continue building on its electoral expertise by becoming familiar with the different systems employed throughout the world.

Preparations for this study tour began with an assessment of the COMELEC’s needs based on the opportunities and challenges presented by the 2010 elections. This preliminary assessment allowed IFE to design a five day election management workshop in collaboration with TRIFE and UNDP. Renato Magbutay, a COMELEC regional director, and Bartolome Sinocruz, Deputy Director of Operations for the COMELEC, subsequently traveled to Mexico to meet with Mexican counterparts and discuss a range of topics that included: electoral budgeting, election adjudication, international election observation, election technology, civic education, voter registry, boundary delimitation, strategic planning and electoral organization.

During the course of the workshop, Philippine and Mexican delegates realized that they shared similar challenges that emerged from their similar geographical and socio-political backgrounds and the issues that managing modern elections present. One of the most significant of these challenges is the need to earn the public’s trust in the electoral process. In this regard, the Mexican electoral experience continues to be greatly shaped by the 1990 reforms that aimed to address this issue. One of these reforms called for the creation of a brand new voter registry, the independence of the electoral body from the Executive and greater autonomy in the administration of its budgetary needs. Similarly, Filipino delegates highlighted how they are working to ensure the May 2010 elections increase confidence in the electoral process by utilizing, for the first time on a nationwide scale, automated election technology to count ballots at the precinct level and transmit results electronically.

The Mexican presenters were candid in sharing with COMELEC delegates the failures of the past, what they did to address them, and in many cases, what they are still doing to correct persistent flaws in the system. They also shared examples of what the IFE has done to address some of the practical problems the population faces when preparing to vote. For example, during the discussion on voter registry, the presenter, Alberto Alonso, related IFE’s decision to not only make the voting card free, but provide scanners to the local offices so the great majority of rural poor would not have to pay for photocopies of required documentation which would make it economically difficult for them to participate in registration.

The COMELEC faces a considerable challenge in implementing a nationwide automated election system for the first time in the Philippines. The COMELEC and other electoral bodies working to improve and update their systems can find great support and guidance in their international counterparts.