Post-Election Audits in the Philippines

Abstract

How do you observe the unobservable? The election technology in use in the Philippines are optical ballot scanners called Vote Counting Machines (VCMs) that scan, count, and transmit election results at the close of polls back to the national tallying center. Postelection audits called Random Manual Audits (RMAs) are required by law to take place prior to the result becoming final. In this paper, we explore the idea of replacing RMAs by Risk-Limiting Audits (RLAs) that are effcient, have a high chance of correcting an incorrect election outcome by the means of a recount, and can therefore strengthen public confidence in the election.