IBON: 64% of Pinoys believe automation will lead to poll failure

Sixty-four percent of Filipinos believe the poll automation program may lead to a failure of elections, according to a survey conducted by militant think tank IBON Foundation. IBON said Wednesday night that 88.5 percent of respondents were aware of poll automation. Of the number, 64 percent believe automation "could fail and lead to electoral failure." The group said it conducted its survey April 9 to 18 among 1,501 respondents, weeks before fears of election failure intensified with the glitches that marred the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines that will be used in the polls. It said the survey adopted a multi-stage probability sampling scheme and has an error margin of three percent. Of those asked if they are aware of the implementation of the poll automation program, 88.54 percent said they were aware, while 10.79 percent said they were not. This was higher than the 85.35 percent who said they were aware of the automation in January 2010. When asked if there is a chance the poll automation would fail and lead to a failure of elections, 64.11 percent answered yes, 8.43 percent answered no, 26.94 percent said "Don't know" and 0.53 percent gave no answer. — LBG, GMANews.TV