MANILA, 18 January 2007 — Should Congress approve amendments to the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) law to allow postal and online voting, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said it will test voting via the Internet only in Singapore in the Philippines’ midterm election in May.
Commissioner Florentino Tuason Jr., chairman of the Committee on Overseas Absentee Voting, said the process has to be tried first and that Singapore is ideal for testing online voting because it has a well-developed information and communications technology industry.
There are 26,000 registered Filipino absentee voters in Singapore.
“The reason why we chose Singapore is according to our supplier and our own assessment, it’s easy for them to educate, first through the website, then by training,” Tuason said in an interview.
He said before the elections, Filipinos will be educated on Internet voting through local newspapers and Filipino groups in city-state.
Other areas cannot be added for the pilot run of Internet voting as “there is no more time” for preparations, he said.
The commissioner said the Comelec will provide an online microsite for Internet voting. As soon as the site is opened by the voter, an instructional video will automatically pop up.
Each voter will be asked to key in his or her personal details to get a PIN (personal identification number) code. After encoding the right PIN code, the names of the candidates, with their pictures and affiliations, will be shown to the voter.
After casting their votes, voters will be given a printed receipt as proof that their votes have been registered at Comelec’s database.
He said the Office of the Solicitor General approved the selection of Scytl.com as the software provider even without a public bidding as the Hewlett-Packard subsidiary has a proven track record and its system has safeguards against cheating.
“Anyway Scytl is not controversial so we can bypass the bidding process because that is what takes a lot of time. Having to go through the bidding process will take too long,” Tuason said in an earlier telephone interview.
Filipino groups in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia which has the largest Filipino community and number of registered absentee voters, have been clamoring to be allowed to vote by mail and via the Internet.
But Tuason said even postal voting in Mideastern countries as well as in Hong Kong and other parts of China is not being endorsed by the Comelec because of the “unreliable” mailing system. Many Filipinos in the Middle East use the post office boxes of their sponsors, unlike in other countries where home addresses are being used.
He said that officials of Philippine embassies, consulates and other places designated by Comelec as official voting sites have also declined to recommend postal voting.
But he said he has always been of the opinion that Internet voting was practical and assured Filipinos in Saudi Arabia that they will be among those next in line to try Internet voting in 2010.
If Internet voting in Singapore is proven successful, the same system will be introduced to other countries with Filipino communities in the 2010 elections, he said.
“One of the constraints in voting is they have to go to the embassies and consulates, which are sometimes 150 kilometers away. Now they can vote in their houses as long as there is an Internet connection,” Tuason explained.
Postal voting will also be allowed in the United States, Canada, Japan, Singapore, United Kingdom, Italy and other European countries and Australia.
