IT industry looks forward to automated elections

By MELVIN G. CALIMAG

The local IT industry, represented by the Philippine Computer Society (PCS), will be conducting intense lobbying and negotiations with the government and private sectors in the next six months to finally get the modernization of elections going.


The efforts would include lobbying both chambers of Congress to pass amendments to RA 8436 or the election modernization law to make it more technology neutral, according to PCS director Edmundo Casino.

"The law is so flawed that the provisions contained too much specific requirements of a certain technology that it looked a purchase order," said Casino, referring to OMR (optical mark recognition) technology.

This requirement virtually shut the doors to other systems such as Botong Pinoy, a homegrown automated voting system developed by local technology firm Mega Data Corp.

The company, perhaps exasperated by political foot-dragging, made a major move by donating the voting system to the Philippine government in an IT conference held last June 7.

The company, represented by its chairman and CEO Rafael Garcia III, led the symbolic turnover of the system’s software to PCS president Bing Van Tooren during the 11th PCS Information Technology Congress at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

Mega Data Corp. said it made the decision to turnover the voting system for free and without strings attached after years of unsuccessfully convincing the government of the wisdom of adopting it for the elections.

"Now, I can say we have made our contribution for our country," said Garcia. "The ball is now in the hands of the Philippine community to pursue the implementation of computerized elections in 2007 and 2010."

Not to be confused with Mega Pacific Corp., the company whose election modernization contract was voided by the Supreme Court, Mega Data is the company behind the modernization projects at the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and Land Transportation Office (LTO).

Jose Avedillo, vice president of Mega Data Corp., said the company’s profitable business collaboration with the NBI and LTO afforded it to donate the voting software.

Botong Pinoy, the company said, addresses all problems peculiar to Philippine elections, particularly dagdag-bawas. The system can talk in ten major local languages and allows voters to vote by pointing at the picture of their chosen candidates.

Botong Pinoy uses regular PCs instead of proprietary counting machines, the company said. This setup, it added, will allow schools to use the PCs and borrowed only by the Comelec during election time.

To avoid fraud, the system is booted up from the CD and is not stored in the PC’s memory. A CD will be distributed to each election precinct across the country.

For all its strengths, the software donation made by Mega Data will mean nothing unless amendments to the law are made, said National Computer Center director general Tim Diaz de Rivera.

"So we’re hoping that the changes in the law will be made soon," Diaz de Rivera said, adding that the NCC will be part of the advisory council that will assist the Comelec in implementing the system in case the amendments are approved by Congress.

But just in case the legislative department fails to amend the law, PCS’s Casino said they still have a second option: To convince Comelec to conduct the elections via text messaging.

What could possibly be the first of its kind and worthy of the reputation of the Philippines as the text messaging capital of the world, the system would call for voters to register their name to the local election officer via SMS in order for them to vote.

Any message emanating from unregistered number will be rejected by the system, Casino said.

The system is far from finished though as the PCS is still discussing the project with the mobile operators, he added.

"But this is much better than for us counting sticks in the blackboard. Another elections of this kind will pave the way for another ‘Hello Garci’ controversy."