Expensive failure
| FRONTLINE |
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| Ninez Cacho-Olivares |
Sixto Brillantes, new poll chairman, speaks of “perfecting” the automation system and do away with the glitches, as one of the “reforms” he will be instituting at the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
Yet even if the automated elections cost remains at P11.3 billion, which was what the Comelec’s budget was in the 2010 presidential polls, that amount added to the budget is much too much for the Filipinos to pay. And the Comelec was already talking about a P20 billion budget for the next automated polls.
And despite claims of Jose Melo and his commissioners that the automated polls were successful, there is hardly any doubt that the elections were marked with massive fraud. Worse, a manual recount of the vote is not even being allowed by the same poll body which, it should be stressed, is highly unconstitutional, since a machine recount will still not count votes that have not been read by the machine.
The better way is to go back to manual elections — or, at the most, if automation is insisted upon, automation should then be limited to the precinct level because this is where the least cheating is done, and there are enough witnesses to see if the votes are counted correctly. After all, what is desired is a quick count, not an automated vote..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110119com2.html
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