Here?s what some people in Congress are saying, in effect, by not acting on mounting requests for funds to automate the vote: If it?s broke, but broke to our benefit, why fix it?

By the end of the current week, we will find out if Congress really wants to move forward and automate the elections next year. Or, as is looking more and more likely, we will know if Congress wants to make the election syndicates that Commission on Elections Chairman Jose Melo is talking about very, very happy once again by continuing to use a manual counting system.

But first, we must discard the proposal made by one lawmaker to hold ?hybrid? (as in part-manual, part-automated) elections as, well, half-witted. The law that mandates automation of the polls?and which was passed by the same Congress that cannot now decide whether to fund the plan through a supplemental budget?does not provide for hybrids.

The true issue at hand is whether Congress can put money where its mouth had been when it called for full and nationwide automation of the vote through Republic Act 9369. Congress can now only decide whether to follow the provisions of the law that it crafted itself?half-measures aren?t in that law, unfortunately.

It was that law?s predecessor, RA 8436, that instructed Comelec to hold selective automation. The current version?the same one that many lawmakers are having serious bouts of anxiety about?would make a hybrid election illegal.

No, semi-automating is even worse than not automating, really. For Congress to tell Comelec to dance to this strange hybrid tune, our lawmakers will have to amend the present law?an effort that would take even more time than just giving the poll body the money it needs to use machines to count the vote.

At least our lawmakers in the House and in the Senate will be able to justify not giving funds to a fully automated count by blaming Comelec or any number of outside agencies, while puffing up their chests and saying they were right all along for not wasting taxpayers? money. But while they can explain away applying the brakes to nationwide poll automation at the last minute, our legislators won?t be able to get away with selective implementation of the law?especially if doing so favors some of their fellow politicians while allowing others to twist in the wind.

The Comelec has wisely declared that it will accept either fully manual or fully automated polls, not some wimpy, half-hearted faux compromise of a hybrid. If the commission is thinking ahead by trying to avoid protests from people who will claim that they won in the manual count but lost in the automated one (or vice versa), it did not say so.

Hybrids are good for automobiles or crops. For elections, Congress can either go the full monty or keep all of its clothes on?and keep on making the election syndicates happy.

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Perhaps Congress should be reminded about the last law it passed on automating the elections less than two years ago. In the ?Declaration of Policy? that prefaced RA 9369, Congress said:

?It is policy of the State to ensure free, orderly, honest, peaceful, credible and informed elections, plebiscites, referenda, recall and other similar electoral exercises by improving on the election process and adopting systems, which shall involve the use of an automated election system that will ensure the secrecy and sanctity of the ballot and all election, consolidation and transmission documents in order that the process shall be transparent and credible and that the results shall be fast, accurate and reflective of the genuine will of the people.?

Shorn of the verbiage, that ought to make it clear that Congress wants to automate the polls as a matter of unshakeable policy. No wonder Melo and the rest of the commission are wondering why the same Congress that could cough up such a declaration is now having cold feet about the prospect of automating the vote.

But there?s more. In the next very paragraph of that policy declaration, Congress says: ?The State recognizes the mandate and authority of the [Comelec] to prescribe adoption and use of the most suitable technology of demonstrated capability taking into account the situation prevailing in the area and the funds available for the purpose.?

Fast-forward to the present, where Senator Francis Escudero?who privately claims to be the second coming of Barack Obama?is warning us of a repeat of the Mega Pacific fiasco, in which government spent a pile of money for counting machines that were never used because the Supreme Court voided the contract for their purchase. Escudero seems to be laying the groundwork for a Senate refusal of the funds the Comelec is asking for, by raising the specter of another anomalous big-ticket purchase.

But Escudero seems to blithely forget that unless the Comelec is given the funds to automate the vote, a much bigger anomaly that has been going on for decades will be allowed to continue? that of fraudulent counting, canvassing and consolidating the ballots. And if Escudero doesn?t think that automating the vote is going to eliminate at least some fraud in our hopelessly antiquated manual system, then he?s probably more clueless than anyone thought.

More to the point was the assessment made by Muntinlupa Rep. Rozzano Rufino Biazon, vice chairman of the House appropriations committee, on the sudden lack of enthusiasm in Congress for automated voting: ?There are those who are simply resisting new technology, something like a fear of the unknown, [thinking] that the automated counting system may be used as an automated cheating system,? Biazon said.

But cheating is as cheating does, apparently, to paraphrase Forrest Gump. Or, as the Comelec?s Melo says more sanguinely: ?If we go manual all the way, [fraud] syndicates will come alive [and the] operators in this kalokohan in the past will be very, very happy.?

Congress?both the House and the Senate?has a chance to end the kalokohan this week. Or it can pass up the opportunity like it?s done before, because some of its own members don?t want to take their chances in an election they can?t rig.

The rest is just hot air.