Comelec: Require biometrics

TO HELP it clean up the list of voters, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is asking Congress to pass a law requiring every registered voter to have their biometric data taken.

The law, said Provincial Election Supervisor Lionel Marco Castillano, should compel everyone to have their fingerprints, photo and signature electronically captured, so the Comelec’s P1.2-billion Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) project will not go to waste.

The AFIS helps the Comelec identify and weed out double registrants.

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Castillano said about 50 percent of all voters have no biometric data yet. He was yesterday’s guest in the “Tell it to Sun.Star” forum with reporters and editors.

The Comelec started capturing biometric data in 2003. Voters registered before that year will have to visit the Comelec to have their photos, fingerprints and signatures digitally stored. (They can still vote this year, however, even in the absence of biometric data, as long as they did not skip the last two elections.)

This year, Comelec is studying the possibility of increasing the nitrate content of their indelible ink from five to 20 percent, so it will not be wiped clean immediately after a voter votes.

He said, though, that even if India uses an ink with 25 percent nitrate, the Comelec is cautious because it might cause burns.

Challenge

Amid public anxiety over the first automated elections in the Philippines, a lawyer reminded voters that failure of automation does not necessarily mean a failure of elections.

The machines bogging down or the system getting hacked is not even automation’s most serious threat, he said, but older weaknesses in the electoral system, like vote-buying and harassment of voters and election inspectors, said Atty. Luie Tito F. Guia.

Another possibility is the machine being tampered with or damaged, especially when the machines are transported. The machines could also be stolen to jeopardize the counting of the votes.

Guia is the immediate past president of the Lawyers’ League for Liberty (Libertas), a non-profit organization of lawyers pledging to uphold law and justice reform and to promote democracy and human rights.

Guia said the public should remember that while automation may fail, the votes can still be tallied because the ballots are available for manual counting.