Thursday, May 17, 2007 Polls should go hi-tech: Comelec By Stephen capillas
WITH the 2007 elections now entering the tabulation phase, the regional Commission on Elections (Comelec) said any plans for the computerization of the 2010 elections would have to start the minute the newly elected lawmakers sit in session this year.
Regional Comelec Director Dennis Ausan said this, explaining that it would take considerable time for the election agency to set up the technical infrastructure, personnel training, and trial runs to achieve this purpose.
"The Comelec managed to pass the law for automation of the elections but due to several questions about the acquisition of the automated counting machines (ACM) this was not fully realized," Ausan said.
Despite this, Ausan said, the computerization of the elections is essential if only to disprove once and for all doubts and questions about the integrity of the elections, which had been wracked with allegations of vote-buying, ballot-switching, and assorted electoral cheating practices.
Foreign observer teams noted with alarm the rampant vote-buying done in areas like Lanao provinces and called on reforms from the Comelec.
Ausan said it would take sometime before the country's elections would be considered fully automated similar to the US and Europe, saying the technology there is years ahead of automated elections applied elsewhere.
Calls for the automation of the elections were sounded off by the National Movement For Free Elections (Namfrel) central office hours after their regional offices started tabulation of the votes nationwide.
Previously senatorial candidate Francis Escudero said the automation of the elections would only pose the same problems for the Comelec, since the delivery of ballots is still done and thus subject to harassment and manipulation.
Escudero instead proposed that computerization of the elections be done in selected urban areas throughout the country and that voting be done online.
