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GIVEN
barely four months before Election Day, any effort to
apply the recently signed Automated Election System Law
in the May 14 elections would likely “end up in
disaster,” Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr.
warned over the weekend.
Pimentel
pointed out that acute time constraints prevent the
Commission on Elections (Comelec) from implementing the
law on election automation in time for the mid-term
voting.
“To say
it could still be done would be wishful thinking,” he
said.
Pimentel
added that he respects the decision of the Comelec not
to rush computerization of the coming elections despite
the signing of the law, Republic Act 9369, by President
Arroyo authorizing automation of the electoral system.
Pimentel
pleaded with all parties concerned to “stop bickering”
over the issue of whether to proceed or shelve the
automation of the coming national and local elections.
He said
election authorities and information technology experts
have admitted that it would take at least one year to
prepare for automated elections even on a partial basis.
Implementing the automated election law with “undue
haste and haphazard manner,” he warned, would only lead
to a repeat of the failed poll automation project
applied in the 2004 elections and the 1996 regional
election in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
“But
since the law has been signed and P2.6 billion has been
allotted for the purpose, the Comelec can already lay
the groundwork for full implementation of automated
voting and counting process in the 2010 elections,”
Pimentel proposed.
The
original version of the automated election system law
provided for the automation scheme to cover only two
pilot provinces and two pilot cities in the first
election to be conducted soon after passage of the bill.
But
Pimentel complained this was later expanded to 12, or
two provinces and two cities each in Luzon, the Visayas,
and Mindanao. “If you widen the areas of coverage of the
automated election on a pilot basis, so many people will
be disfranchised in case the system malfunctions.”
He added
that this could also cause disarray in the tabulation of
votes and determination of winners in the senatorial
elections.
Pimentel
suggested it would be more advantageous to implement the
election automation system on a gradual basis to ensure
efficiency and accuracy.
The
automated election system “Botong Pinoy,” that was
developed by a Filipino company has been offered to the
Comelec for free in the 2007 elections.
Botong
Pinoy is one of five election systems that the
government is evaluating for piloting in the elections.
Probably
the only election system provider supplying a complete
end-to-end solution, from registration, voting, counting
to transmission, tabulation, and even recounting, Mega
Data, the project proponent, said Botong Pinoy does not
require a unique computer system that can only be used
for elections. Instead, it uses standard personal
computers such as those usually found in schools or
businesses and government offices.
In a
statement, Mega Data said: “Every three years, the
Comelec will only need to borrow the standard computers
installed in schools, where the elections are held
anyway, for the one or two days needed to conduct the
local or national elections.”
The
education department can install computers in all
schools to help educate students, and the
Philippines
can have fully computerized elections for free, since
Botong Pinoy is being made available to the Comelec at
no charge in the 2007 and 2010 elections. The system
offers no storage problems after the elections, no
transportation problems and the Philippines gets full
use of its investment in computers for our schools.”
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