Fraud has long been the bane of Philippine elections.

A manual counting system wherein votes were tallied with pen and paper was vulnerable to massive cheating by operators who used every trick in the book, from stealing ballots to changing the numbers on canvass sheets.

Teachers who served as poll officials were intimidated and threatened.

The country is desperate for a credible election this May 10… and that's part of the reason why Filipinos eagerly welcomed the introduction of an automated counting system.

With less opportunities for human intervention in the vote tallying process, officials are hoping that the incidents of fraud will be drastically minimized and a winner will be declared early and not weeks later as in the past.

Vote fraud has dogged past Philippines' presidents. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the most unpopular leader since dictator Ferdinand Marcos, lost support after allegations that she stole the 2004 elections and her lack of legitimacy has stunted the country's growth.

But some critics say the government rushed into automation and the logistical and infrastructure challenges are too difficult to deal with.

The success of the poll automation lies on counting machines that will transmit the results electronically to a single canvassing center. But earlier this week, more than 76,000 memory cards from the voting machines have been recalled after tests found that they failed to read ballots and print accurate results.

But the spokesperson for the Commission on Elections, or COMELEC, says they are confident that the glitches can be fixed and automated polls can go ahead on May 10.

[...]