Many had hoped that this coming 2010 election no more cheating will be done and as this new automated election system exist many had questioned its capability and security. The main problem here in our country is not the delayed of the result but the “dagdag bawas” of the votes. So the result of the election is more important than how fast it is to be tallied. Can the automated election system provide us more honest result than the old ways of casting our votes? The answer lies in the hand of the candidates, if they will try to cheat or not. In short it’s a matter of self discipline. What is automated election system really is? According to REPUBLIC ACT No. 8436, Automated Election System (AES) is a system using appropriate technology for voting and electronic devices to count votes and canvass/consolidate results. And according to what I’ve research, two voting technologies will be used; the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) and the Optical Mark Reader (OMR). In a Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) system, the voter is presented with a screen showing all the names of the candidates. To cast his vote, the voter has to touch the name of the candidate of his choice on the screen, or on a separate electronic ballot to be attached to the voting machine, and his vote automatically gets counted. Once the voter has confirmed his vote, the machine will print out a copy of his vote, which the voter will deposit in the ballot box. In an Optical Mark Reader (OMR) system they will use Automated Counting Machine (ACM) to count the votes in the ballots. (The Mindanao Current) As an IT student, the technology mentioned above is not impossible to falsify or tamper. In Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) there is a program that let the voters choose who to vote. If the program record there votes properly they will not know. And in Optical Mark Reader (OMR) voters will feed the ballot into the machine the next thing they will see is the printed election return. Whether their votes were properly counted they will not know. Is the automation of the election process will be the answer to the problems we have always encountered during every election period? Maybe, we will not know it unless we try. If we will just rely on the theories about the automated election system nothing will happen to us and the old ways of casting our votes will remain same as the old ways of cheating. The automation of the election process means that the old ways of voting, and tallying the votes will be replaced. Instead of manual process, computers will be used. Paper ballots and ball pens are not needed. You just need to press the button in the machine for your candidate and the machine will automatically register your vote. The counting and tallying of votes are also will be done by the machines. So there’s no need for the old version of tallying were the votes are written and been tallied on blackboards. This will be a greater help for our teachers that are always the one who are in charge in the elections. And because of the automation, for sure the election time will be lessen. The results will be release much sooner than before so the work of the teachers will be lessened. And because the machines will do the works, there’s no need for many workers. Even the problems that occur about cheating candidates will be lessening too. Because there is no need for ballot and ballot boxes, the common problem of losing the boxes will not be a problem anymore. Maybe “dagdag bawas”, a common method use by the candidates who are desperate to win will not be done in the automated process. It will be hard for them to manipulate the votes because it is now listed in machines. And regarding about the safety of the votes, maybe the automation will be a help to secure all the votes in safe. But there is a little problem about the automation. Not all the voters are familiar about the process of voting using machines so they needed assistance now for them to be able to cast their vote with no problem. And this automated election system is more costly than the old one. So the automated process of the election is much better than the old process. There are things that are easily done in the automation. The result is the most important of all and because the machines are the one who to the counting, it will not take months or even weeks, we will already know who are the new elected people that will serve our country. But in every change, there is always a problem. So the success of the election, automated or not, will always start on us… ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ SMARTMATIC… Smarmatic International Corp. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Smart¬matic International Holdings, BV of The Netherlands. The firm was founded more than a decade ago as a research and development group specializing in systems integration. Smartmatic has organized elections in several regions around the world, including South America, the Car¬ribean, the United States and Asia. Smartmatic was also the system provider for the 2007 Autonomous Region in Muslim Minda¬nao elections. Of the seven consortia, only Smartmatic/TIM was declared by the committee as qualified in terms of financial and technical requirements and eligibility. TIM… Total Information Management (TIM), on the other hand, is a Filipino-owned information technology company that operates nationwide and offers various information-technology (IT) services and products. According to its website, TIM was founded in 1985 as a supplier for re¬certified and refurbished IBM mainframes and peripheral equipment. Since then, it has grown to be the country’s leading technology Services Company. MAJOR CHANGES FROM THE MANUAL SYSTEM No writing of names - All candidates' names are pre-printed on the ballot. The entire voter would have to do to indicate his vote is to shade the oval corresponding to the name of the candidate of his choice. Ballots are not counted in the polling place - After the closing of the polls, the ballots will be brought to the centralized counting center to be counted by the machines. There are added security features at different levels - Aside from the usual built-in securities in the current manual system, there would be additional security features in the following levels: printing of ballots, shipment, counting and canvassing Minimum human intervention - Human intervention is limited to telling the machine to: start and stop counting the ballots, start saving the results in a diskette (or any data storage device), and start printing the results. And appreciation of ballots is entirely done by the machine. |
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