Press Release
June 28, 2009

COMELEC PRESSED TO SATISFY CONCERNS OVER AUTOMATION
ROXAS: POLL BODY MUST ENSURE POLLS WON'T BE RISKED

Liberal President Senator Mar Roxas today asked the Commission on Elections to give full assurance the 2010 elections will not be put to risk by any hitch in the planned poll automation.

Roxas said the assurance is required in the light of continuing concerns that the elections body remains unprepared to supervise automation of the elections and questions on the ability of the winning bidder for the poll automation project to carry it out up to the most remote precinct in the country.

Roxas' concerns were contained in a letter this week to Comelec Chair Jose Melo by his chief of staff Atty. Blas G. Viterbo.

He listed the following questions regarding poll automation that the Comelec must answer:

1. "Is the Comelec prepared with contingency measures in the event of technical failure or destruction of the counting machines? What are these contingency measures?"

2. "What proof shall Comelec have to show that voters are properly informed on how to vote using the machine-readable ballot? What is the level of accuracy or degree of confidence?" he added.

3. "What plans does the Comelec have to address a likely scenario of voters trooping to the polling stations in the morning on Election Day possibly causing long queues of voters waiting their turn to feed the ballots into the counting machine?"

4. "How will the polling stations be configured so that voters will not have to go out of the polling stations, with the ballot that they had just filled, to another room where the counting machine is stationed?"

5. What are the Comelec rules governing the conduct of a random manual audit? Specifically, when is it undertaken? What will prevail in cases where discrepancy between the machine count and the random manual audit count occurs?

News Latest News Feed