MANILA – Results of the May 2010 polls will be known in three days due to the computerization of the electoral process, the country’s chief election official assured.
Retired Supreme Court justice Jose Melo, the chairman of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), explained that automating next year’s polls will do away with the outmoded and tedious manual voting and tabulation of the results that often resulted in massive cheating and similar irregularities in the past.
Melo told a press briefing the Comelec will use the optical mark reader (OMR) technology as its main instrument in the computerization of the 2010 polls, which will enable voters to elect the president, vice president, senators, congressmen, governors as well as local officials like mayors and councilors.
Fears have been raised by concerned sectors on the holding of the 2010 polls due to the renewed attempt by administration lawmakers to push through the controversial issue of Charter change (Cha-cha) which calls for a shift in the form of government from the presidential system to federal parliamentary.
The political opposition and other critics warned that Cha-cha is being used as a ploy by administration supporters to extend the stay in power of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo beyond 2010 when her term is supposed to end.
But Melo earlier expressed doubt whether Cha-cha would prosper due to lack of time, mainly because the 2010 polls are just a year away.
The OMR technology, Melo said, is a paper-based voting system that allows the voter to mark his chosen candidates on a specially printed ballot that he then feeds into a scanner that would record his vote and store the results in the machine.
Melo said the OMR was one of the two technologies used by the Comelec in the first-ever attempt to computerize the elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in the August 2008 polls.
The other is the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) system in which the voter records his chosen candidates on a screen which the machine immediately records.
According to Melo, the use of the OMR and DRE technologies proved successful in the ARMM elections because the winners were known a day after the voting precincts had closed.
However, the Comelec chairman said they opted to use the OMR system in the , pointing out that it is more transparent and cheaper than the DRE technology.
Although the DRE system is faster, Melo said the OMR also has a decided advantage in the sense that it provides a paper trail that enables the voter to have a “receipt” as proof that he cast his ballot.
Melo urged Congress to immediately pass a bill forwarded by Malacanang, which allocates the equivalent of about $200 million for the computerization of the May 2010 elections.
He cited the urgent need for the Comelec to have the amount so it can buy the OMR machines needed.
With their use, Melo expressed confidence the 2010 polls in the Philippines would be similar to the November 2008 polls which saw the election of Chicago freshman Senator Barack Obama as the 44th American president.
He said IT experts and technicians have assured the Comelec that with automation, the results of the elections would be known, at the most, in three days.
However, he clarified that under the law, the Comelec is allowed only to proclaim the winners in the senatorial race as well as the party-list representatives.
The regional Comelec offices, Melo added, have been tasked to proclaim the regional winners like those running for the posts of governor, vice governor, mayor, vice mayor and councilor.
In the case of the president and vice president, that task of proclaiming the winners has been assigned to Congress after the Comelec has transmitted the results of the nationwide tabulation to the legislature, Melo said.
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[...] Senate is also expected to approve the proposed funding to ensure that the 2010 presidential polls will be computerized and thus, wean the country away from the outmoded and ancient manual voting and tabulation of [...]