Press Release
January 7, 2009

Loren rues weakness of Comelec's automated poll system

"A computerized election system that cannot guard against poll fraud is next to useless."

Thus said Senator Loren Legarda yesterday after Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Melo admitted in a report that the Optical Mark Reader (OMR) technology which the Comelec is proposing to use in the 2010 national elections would not be able to flush out double or multiple registrants.

"In short, flying voters will have a field day running rings around this system for which the Comelec had asked for P13.9 billion in supplemental budget," said Loren.

"We cannot have a computerized poll system that can count votes, but which cannot determine whether the votes being counted are authentic or fraudulent," she added.

Melo was quoted as saying that the system would need cross-matching machines that could identify voters with double and multiple registrations.

But the P13.9 billion supplemental budget being sought for by the Comelec for the computerization of the 2010 elections apparently would not include funds for the said cross-matching machines.

Loren said that without the capability to weed out bogus votes, the system the Comelec wants to use would result to "garbage in, garbage out."

She reiterated that the very essence of employing a computerized poll system is to guard against poll fraud.

The Comelec had chosen the OMR system although it tested another technology, the direct recording electronic system or DRE, which not only counts votes faster than OMR but also determines the identity of voters through biometrics, thus weeding out double registrants.

Melo said that OMR is cheaper than DRE hence the choice made by the Comelec.

"Maling pagtitipid iyan ganoon dahil bakit pa tayo magko-computerized election kung mapapalusutan rin pala ito ng mga nagnanais mandaya,"said Loren.

Loren added that the Comelec cannot ask voters to make up for the weakness of the OMR by asking them to act as whistle -blowers on flying voters.

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