Comelec still prefers PCOS for 2013 polls

Despite the problems encountered by the voting machines in the recent automated elections, a Commission on Elections (Comelec) official on Thursday said he would still prefer the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines to be used in the 2013 polls. Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Lararazabal said it would be better to use the PCOS machines because the voters are already familiar with them. "The system is ideal for 2013. Personally PCOS would be (better)... people are already informed, they already know how to vote," he told reporters in an interview. He said the only thing that would probably change are the size of the font and ovals on the ballot. The country used 25-inch ballots in the May polls, which were fed to PCOS units that counted and transmitted the results to different servers. The consortium of Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) provided the Philippines with 82,200 voting machines and other technologies needed for automating the polls for the price of P7.2 billion. But a few days before the elections, some machines failed to read votes accurately, forcing Smartmatic to pull out and replace the compact flash cards of all the voting machines deployed all over the country. Larrazabal admitted that the technology was far from being perfect, but “it heralded a new era of elections in the country." The commissioner noted, however, that the choice of what technology to use in 2013 will still have to be determined by the en banc. On the other hand, he said that the poll body would welcome a law that would require all voters to have biometrics. "We need biometrics [because] this will allow [the Comelec] to really cleanse the voters' list," he said. Larrazabal said they are planning on commissioning an independent evaluation of the automated elections, as well as on starting their voter education projects earlier. - Kimberly Jane Tan/KBK, GMANews.TV