Wednesday, July 8, 2009
ELECTION ON 2010
VS
This up-coming election 2010 has new system implemented. For the past years, we manually voted and also counted our votes manually. Maybe this kind of system has much risk. There are more chances that the Officials can cheat the country. So, in this situation, our government has a program to convert manual election into automated election.
“In the automated system, where both voting and canvass is done through a printed ballot fed into a machine, voters will need to shade an oval space beside the printed names of each of the candidates of each of these positions. So the ballot will contain some 300 names of persons or parties”, said the editorial of website Technograph of the
THE COMMISSION on Elections (Comelec) en banc was bid and awarded the election automation contract to Total Information Management (TIM)/Smartmatic. Smartmatic was one of the service providers of the more expensive direct recording electronic system, or touch-screen technology, for the ARMM elections. TIM/Smartmatic was the only bidder left after six others were disqualified by the special bids and awards committee for failing to provide some documents. The bidding, which began over a month ago, originally had seven bidders. Smartmatic provided all documents and was the only company to demonstrate precinct count optical scan machines. The company is based in the
The calls came at the time TIM was stalling in signing the incorporation papers for the registration of its joint venture partnership with Barbados-based Smartmatic with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), told Technograph Technology in the Philippines in one of there website.
But is the
- The 2003 functional literacy survey of the National Statistics Office (NSO) showed ARMM as having the lowest basic literacy rate in the country, with 30 percent of its people aged 10-64 years old considered illiterate.
- On a national level, one in 10 Filipinos can not read and write, according to the survey.
- Ustadz Esmael Ibrahim of the Assembly of Darul Ifta of the
“We are ready. There will be full automation nationwide,” Melo said at a press briefing Thursday after the Senate passed the House-approved P11.3-billion supplemental budget for the automation of the elections on May 10, 2010.
But weeks ago, there is shocking news about this Automated Election system. Total Information Management Corp. (TIM) has pulled out of its partnership with Smartmatic Corp., putting the P11.3-billion poll automation project next year in jeopardy.
“Mr. Jose Antunez (President of TIM) came to my office and told me they are withdrawing from the project citing their irreconcilable differences (with Smartmatic)," Elections Chairman Jose Melo told reporters on different news, without mentioning the nature of the feud. But word has leaked that the breakup was caused by corporate issues between Smartmatic and TIM ranging from the chairmanship of the board to funding disputes.
Earlier in the day, Melo suspended the contract negotiations with Smartmatic-TIM due to its failure to submit its joint venture incorporation papers. With the Smartmatic-TIM breakup, Melo said this will leave the Comelec with the following options:
1. A second bidding
2. A negotiated contract
3. Partial automation
4. Revert to manual elections
Cesar Flores, Smartmatic’s international sales director and spokesman, blamed their partner TIM for the delay, saying Smartmatic officers signed the incorporation registration papers last week. Sinse according to the law, the Netherlands-based firm Smartmatic cannot operate without a local joint venture partner, TIM in this case.
A visibly upset Melo said the Comelec is set to look into the names behind TIM to see if these people may have been influenced by groups who are against automated elections.
Melo said that though they have enough time to prepare for manual voting and counting, the main goal of eradicating poll fraud will be difficult to achieve if the elections are not automated.
For joint venture partnerships, the law allows foreigners to bid for projects provided they have local partners representing 60 per cent of the project.
The bidding rules also prohibit Smartmatic from getting a replacement local partner to push through with the P11.3 billion poll automation.
The poll chief said it is frustrating to know that TIM is seemingly putting “personal interests" ahead of a matter of national importance.
Comelec director Ferdinand Rafanan, head of the Special Bids and Awards Committee, said TIM could be charged criminally, civil and administratively.
He added that they are similarly forfeiting the P350 million performance security bond posted by TIM and the group will also be barred for one year from joining any bidding of the Comelec.
- With a report from Amita Legaspi, GMANews.TV
Machine vulnerability
Poll automation feeds the wrong impression to the public that elections will be clean and credible. Because it is a machine, it is powerless against any fraud that takes place before, during, and after the elections. And, because it is just a machine, it is vulnerable to human intervention such as software attack, glitches, and other technical problems that could result in wholesale electronic cheating. (See www.cenpeg.org for papers and powerpoints on election automation.) The high stakes in the 2010 elections, including choosing a new president, administration attempts to make sure that the next president is friendly to Gloria M. Arroyo, as well as the 17,000 national and local seats up for grabs by some 90,000 candidates will make fraud machineries sabotage the whole electoral process using both the traditional and modern technology.
Given the expected operations of fraud machineries in the coming elections, one way by which the present Comelec can at least minimize cheating is to make poll automation open, transparent, credible, and participatory. It does not make sense that the poll body has chosen the OMR which makes counting and canvassing of votes invisible to the eye with Comelec perhaps hoping that the poll officials, machines, vendors, software developers, electronic transmission systems, and other technical services can be trusted.
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