Automated voting jolts local politics into digital age 05/15/2010

Automated voting jolts local politics into digital age

05/15/2010 Philippine politics will never be the same after the country’s first automated ballot electrified voters long used to cheating, violence and disputes over delayed results. Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, 50, whose parents led the struggle to restore the country’s democracy, will soon become the nation’s first digitally elected President after a rapid vote count showed him winning by a landslide. Despite daunting logistic challenges in a sprawling Southeast Asian archipelago with 50 million voters, ballot-counting machines were activated just in time for Monday’s elections for 17,000 positions. The saying that “guns, goons and gold” lord it over Philippine elections may no longer be totally true after a new weapon, the microchip, entered the scene. “That was so pleasant: waking up to the results the morning after general elections,” political scientist Alex Magno wrote in his column in another daily. “If there was any group wanting to disrupt the voting and the count, they were stumped by the speed of the process.”... MORE   Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/nation/20100515nat7.html

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