Philippines tests vote-counting machines ahead of May elections

Jan 27, 2010, 11:04 GMT

Manila - Philippine election officials on Wednesday declared they had successfully tested the automatic ballot-counting machines to be used in May's elections.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) checked the transmission of results from the counting machines to centralized servers using mobile telephone and satellite networks.

'The tests were successful,' Comelec Chairman Jose Melo said. 'We conducted the tests in 10 key areas all over the Philippines.'

Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said one area encountered a 'minor' transmission problem which was immediately resolved by switching to an alternative mobile telephone network.

He said a second field test would be conducted to allow the public and legislators to observe the process and to determine the most reliable transmission network.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said the field tests aimed to allay mounting concerns of technical problems causing a failure of the elections.

'Our primary concern in the tests is to show that the counting by the machines and the transmission of the data are in order and the results would be received in full,' he said.

The elections, the first in the Philipines to use the machines, 'will be 100-per-cent automated,' Jimenez said.

Comelec Commissioner Armando Velasco assured legislators that a 'contingency plan of using (the) manual system,' was being put in place for the 'remote scenario' of a technical malfunction.

He said the commission was printing manual ballots, where the voter writes out the name of the preferred candidate, for 30 per cent of the country's more than 49 million registered voters.

The electronically counted ballots have the candidates' names preprinted, and voters indicates their choices with a simple pencil mark which is then detected and counted by machine.

More than 18,000 national and local posts are up for grabs in the May elections, including those of president, vice president, senators and House representatives.