Automated Election in the Philippines
The Comelec – Commission on Election in the Philippines have been very busy for the neither previous months nor years preparing for the near May 10, 2010 presidential election. An automated election was proposed by Senator Richard Gordon and officially amended by Republic Act 9369 or the amended Automated Election System. Its main goal is to assure the Filipino people to have a fair, honest and clean election thus, to regain the trust of its people to the electoral process and to its government.
What is this Automated Election?
This is a modern electoral process and also known as the Republic Act 9369 or the Automated Election System, authored by Senator Richard Gordon.
The system involves machines to be deploy in every precincts nationwide that helps to minimized the allotted time for counting of votes, secure the votes of each Filipinos, minimized or totally eliminate cheating or election frauds and regain the trust of every Filipino to the government in terms of electoral process.
The government allotted 11.3 billion supplemental budgets for the said project. The winning bidder will provide 80,200 machines, two of these machines will be deploy on every precincts.
Instead of writing the names of the candidates in the ballot, voters will shade their chosen candidate names. So, it means there is still manual action occurs during the election proper however, the process does not end there. After the voting proper, every ballot will be scan by the Precinct Counting Optical Scan (PCOS) which records and stores the votes and hopefully it neither reduce nor minimize instances of fraud and cheating. The said ballots also feature security codes or markings to safeguard the votes of the people. Thus, this will reduce complaints for this system promises to be fast, accurate and reliable.
The system promises to give fast results in a matter of more or less two (2) days. Even though the actual voting will be manual but the counting and transmissions of votes will be fully automated thus, Comelec is confident that this automation of election will be a success one.
Automated Election Vs Manual Election.
For the recent years, the Philippines have had implemented the manual electoral process. From the word itself “manual” it literally means that every actions occur on the said election is between man to man, those who are involve in the said issue which are the voters and the election officers. From the election preparation, voting proper, vote counting, vote canvassing, result transmission to result generation it is facilitated, administered and the results are manually computed by people. In the manual scenario of election it is prone to fraud and cheating. Filipino voters had experienced to witness this kind of scheme thus; they have loss their trust to our election system. Some example to these election irregularities are vote buying, cheating in vote counting, flying voters, and harassment of voters.
As the technology evolves, Comelec sees that there is a need of a change in our electoral process. And this change leads to the amendment of automation of our election system. In this connection, the realization of the quest of the Filipino people to have a reliable, clean, honest and fair election results to the approval of Republic Act 9369 or the amended Automated Election System.
May 10, 2010 election is the target date of the first nationwide automated election to take place. The said automation had been tested on the Autonomous Region in Muslim Minadanao (ARMM) election on August 2008. That said election was made to be an experiment to test if the proposed automation of election process in this country would be applicable, effective and credible. In result, according to survey conducted by Social Weather Station (SWS) in the ARMM August 2008 election it said to be a successful one and it satisfy the voters in the ARMM.
The following statements is based on the survey conducted by the SWS:
Among ARMM people, 75 percent said that the automated voting in their regional election the previous August gave them “much more” or “somewhat more” confidence that the election was free and fair. In the national survey, on the other hand, only 40 percent said that the automation of the ARMM elections in August 2008 gave them added confidence that the ARMM elections were free and fair. In other words, actual participants became more assured of the fairness of the election process, while mere onlookers mostly stayed skeptical.
Unsurprisingly, the great majority (69 percent) of ARMM voters agreed with the proposal to implement automated voting in the 2010 presidential elections. Only 8 percent disagreed; 24 percent were undecided. (This question was not asked in the October national survey.)
Directly from the people who have actually experienced the automated election, in this case it shows that it is in favor to the automation of 2010 election.
To automate or not to automate the 2010 election.
As an Information Technology student in the University of Southeastern Philippines I would suggest or I will stand in the side of the automation of our electoral process. As mention above it is more advantageous for our government and most importantly to us – the people of the Philippines. The said modern system or the modernization of our election system is not just a mere accessory on our government that we are embracing the high technology around us but this system offer us a secure, reliable, fast, time saving, free, honest and clean election. We all need a change. We all need to hear our voices in this matter. We all need a government that we can trust. And we have the power to make it all come true. To safeguard our votes with this system, to put in position the people that we think best suited for the given positions. All we need is to trust this change; this automation of election will bring good to all of us. With this system, we can guarantee that are votes are safe, accurately recorded, securely stored and will give us accurate and fast results. Why stop the change, when it brings development to our nation? Come to think of it. We want an honest, free and a clean government, why not starts it now? Let us support the 2010 Automated Election System.
