By PHILPPINE PRESS INSTITUTE
www.nordis.net

MANILA CITY — The automated elections system (AES) to be implemented by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) in next year’s national elections will be discussed during the Philippine Press Institute’s three-day seminar, “Preparing for the 2010 Elections – The Practice” to be held October 19-21 at the Pearlmont Inn, Cagayan de Oro city.

The AES segment is part of the seminar’s program to equip the 33 delegates from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao with the right tools in preparation for their coverage of next year’s elections for their respective community newspapers. “There is a need to know, demonstrate and explore the historical significance of automated elections since this will be the first time that this system will be implemented by the poll body nationwide,” Jose L. Pavia, PPI Executive Director said. This system was tested during the ARMM elections in 2008.

Miguel Eugenio M. Avila, Presentations and Demonstrations Coordinator of SMARTMATIC-TIM, will brief the participants about the salient points of the AES as well as a live demonstration on how the precinct count optical scan (PCOS), one of the vital components of the system, works.

SMARTMATIC-TIM is the multinational service provider hired by COMELEC to supply hardware, software and to set up an automated election process from balloting to canvassing in all 80,000 precincts in the country on May 10, 2010.

Some of the familiar concerns to be raised during this segment are: the preparedness of COMELEC and poll automation implementors for public briefings and voter’s education, safeguards against fake ballots, and accuracy of the count.

To have their feel of automated elections, participants will take part in a mock exercise where they will fill up mock ballots and feed the sheets into the slot of a black box called the Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) – a process which will take only 10 seconds. # nordis.net