Thoughts about automated election with regards to the current issue
Issue:
It was heard and seen in the television about what happened to the two companies namely the Total Information Management Corp. (TIM) and Smartmatic International. According to Comelec Chairman Jose Melo, there are some conflicts between the two companies. It says that the TIM was back outing from the partnership of SMARTMATIC. Some issues they were thinking why it was happened is that there are some politicians manipulating TIM to give up the partnership. Some also said that its issue is about financial which is competing either which of the two can get the higher profit in this automated elections.
With that, Comelec were trying their best to make the two companies joint venture together. They are giving TIM and SMARTMATIC days to fix their problem until last July 7, 2009, there's a news aired about it. This was what happened:a
"The information technology companies that will supply the voting machines and the operational expertise to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for the 2010 automated elections submitted their incorporation papers to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday morning, a poll official said.
Smartmatic International and Total Information Management Corp. signed and filed before the SEC their joint venture agreement, which was the source of contention between the two firms last week, Comelec legal chief Ferdinand Rafanan said in an interview.
The poll body was expecting to sign the poll automation contract with the joint venture on or before Friday, he added.
By Monday next week, the Comelec could issue the "notice to proceed" to Smartmatic-TIM so that they could start manufacturing the voting machines in Taiwan.
The Smartmatic-TIM consortium won in the bidding for the contract of the Comelec’s poll automation project with a P7.2-billion proposal. However, the election automation project was almost derailed last week when the Filipino-owned TIM withdrew from its partnership with the Dutch firm Smartmatic over the question of power and control of funds.
Under pressure from Comelec, which threatened to sue TIM, and from other sectors, Smartmatic and TIM patched up their differences late last week ."
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20090706-214142/Smartmatic-TIM-give-SEC-joint-venture-papers
What was really the "Automated Election"?
Based on the Senate Bill No. 2231: (13th Congress) which entitled:
AN ACT AMENDING REPUBLIC ACT NO. 8436, ENTITLED AN ACT AUTHORIZING THE COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS TO USE AN AUTOMATED ELECTION SYSTEM IN THE MAY 11, 1998 NATIONAL OR LOCAL ELECTIONS AND IN SUBSEQUENT NATIONAL AND LOCAL ELECTORAL EXERCISES, TO ENCOURAGE TRANSPARENCY, CREDIBILITY, FAIRNESS AND ACCURACY OF ELECTIONS, AMENDING FOR THE PURPOSE BATAS PAMBANSA BLG. 881, AS AMENDED, REPUBLIC ACT NO. 7166 AND OTHER RELATED ELECTIONS LAWS, PROVIDING FUNDS THEREFOR AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.
On section 2 on the said article defines the automated election system as:
A system using appropriate technology for voting, counting, consolidating, canvassing, transmission of election results and other processes in the conduct of electoral exercises.
Equipments or components that are being used for Automated Election:
1. Counting machine - a machine that uses an optical scanning mark-sense reading
2. Data storage device - a device used to electronically store counting and device of any similar advanced technology to count ballots; canvassing results, such as, memory pack or diskette;
3. Computer set - a set of equipment containing regular components, i.e., monitor, central processing unit or CPU, keyboard and printer;
4. National Ballot - refers to the ballot to be used in the automated election system for the purpose of the May 1998 elections. This shall contain the names of the candidates for president, vice-president, senators and parties, organizations or coalitions participating under the party-list system;
This ballot shall be counted by the counting machine:
5. Local Ballot - refers to the ballot on which the voter will manually write the names of the candidates of his/her choice for member of the House of Representatives, governor,vice-governor, members of the provincial board, mayor, vice-mayor, and members of the city municipal council.
6. Board of Election inspector - there shall be a Board of Election Inspectors in every precinct composed of three (3) regular members who shall conduct the voting, counting and recording of votes in the polling place.
Many questions and complains arise from this issue such as:
* How reliable can be the automated election system be?
Some people said that anything that is being done through computerized would be easier to falsify.
* In the side of indigenous people it would be hard for them to vote if the election will be done automatically because some of them are illiterate.
Advantages of the system to this coming 2010 election:
* There will be no ballot box snatching as the ERs are transmitted electronically for canvassing
* There is less work for the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI)
* If all precincts are connected, national results can be produced within one hour after the close of voting
* There is automated tally of votes at the city/municipal level
* The DRE can include an automated voter validation system
* Canvassing at the city/municipal and provincial levels is almost instantaneous
* There is an instantaneous tally of votes at the precinct level
* Ballots are pre-printed and voters simply mark choices
http://hubpages.com/hub/Automated-Election-Are-we-ready
For me, since we are in the modern world, technology changes.And each corporation or company keeps on updating to the new one. With this automated election, it will become easy to the people assigned during election time to keep things that involved in the election process. Maybe there will be some leakage but results will be come out in just an hour if it was. So, go to the automated election! Just hoping cheating please be avoided to the politicians..aw..haha!peace... :-)
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