MANILA FOCUSES ON ELECTION AUTOMATION AWARENESS

Manila Mayor Alfredo S. Lim leads the city department heads, employees and barangay chairmen in attending the seminar on Automation Law and the actual demonstration of casting of votes conducted by the Commission of Election (COMELEC) headed Atty. Ferdinand Rafanan held at the Cecilia Muñoz Palma Hall in City College of Manila Monday afternoon.

Mayor Lim was a given a chance to experience the new means of casting one’s vote during election.  In the seminar, Lim and the attendees were oriented the proper way of shading and the proper way of inserting a ballot through the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) Machine. 

The COMELEC, if the election becomes successful, aims the country to be the biggest automated election in the whole world. 

It was also learned that the official ballot is bar coded and has ultra-violet ink and once already counted by the PCOS machine the said ballot will not be accepted by any machine if inserted again. 

The accuracy rating of the PCOS machine is 99.995%.  It could even detect and reject fake ballots.  And ballot snatching and switching will never occur for this coming election. 

Brown-out during election is not a problem for the PCOS machine because it has a built-in battery that has a capacity for 16 hours. 

The PCOS machine could transmit through internet service provider to different Municipal Poll Canvassers such as COMELEC, Congress, Kapisanan ng mga Broadcasters sa Pilipinas for the media, accredited citizens arm of COMELEC, dominant majority party, dominant minority party.  

Neither an I.T. expert could hack the system since it has a 128-bit encryption and the transmission of each PCOS machine is only for 2 minutes.  

According to COMELEC, the problems of the election are the human factors involving killing, intimidation, buying of votes and terrorism and asked the attendees to be vigilant. 

COMELEC assured the attendees that there will be no failure of election.  In case of system breakdown the COMELEC has a back-up plan prepared.

Mayor Lim expects the automated election to be successful as he expressed support for high technology in a fast-growing modern country.