The National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) gathered over 90 represetatives of civil society organizations, the academe, political parties, electoral reform advocates and the media on 26 May 2023 to discuss how to enhance the automated election system (AES) for the 2025 national and local elections in the Philippines.

The NAMFREL Stakeholders' Forum on an Alternative Election System also tackled transparency on the vote vount, credibility of vote counting machines, campaign rules, and the compensation of teachers as poll workers.

NAMFREL presented during the Forum its proposed standards to improve AES for the 2025 polls, based on two key principles of private voting and public counting.

1. Open Source Licensing: Utilizing licenses like General Public License or Election
Technology Public License (OSET-PL) to ensure that the software can be reviewed by
everyone.
2. Election Markup Language (EML): Adopting EML without processing or conversion
during transmission, as it contains valuable information for analyzing potential fraud.
3. Sequential numbering and random sorting: Implementing sequential numbers for all
national positions and randomly sorting candidate names to maintain fairness and
neutrality.
4. Digital Signature: Incorporating digital signatures throughout the process to provide
secure authentication. Digital fingerprints can be added to the EML for additional
security.
5. Voter Verified Ballot (VVB): Implementing VVB as a standard for printing ballots. VVB
should be both human-readable and machine-readable using QR codes, enabling public
counting of votes at the precinct level.

Read more about the highlights of the Forum here: