by magnolia_eic | Feb 19, 2010 | Election 2010, National News
SPARE the schools from the dirty politics of elections.
This as the Department of Education (DepEd) has banned posting and distribution of campaign materials in public schools during the election period.
On this, DepEd has reminded politicians of Order No. 10, or the “Clean Schools, Clean Elections” program, which runs from election campaign until results of the May national and local elections are released.
DepEd through Secretary Jesli Lapuz has noted that even before February 9 start of election campaigns, posters and stickers have been posted on school walls and gates all over the country.
Earlier, the Commission on Elections issued Resolution No. 8758, Section 29 of which said “the posting of campaign materials in public places outside of the designated common poster areas such as streets, bridges, public structures or buildings, trees, electric posts or wires, schools, shrines, main thoroughfares and the like is prohibited.”
by magnolia_eic | Feb 19, 2010 | Election 2010, Headlines, National News
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) said that the issue with the telecommunications companies regarding the setting up of data centers has been resolved.
Comelec adviser Renato Garcia said that the Philippine Long Distance Company (PLDT) and Globe Telecoms have agreed to create two data centers for the May 10 national and local elections.
He added that they are now talking with the companies on the installation of the facilities, adding that no contract has been signed yet.
The data banks will not be located in the companies’ main data buildings. For security reasons, Garcia did not disclose where the data centers will be located. He explained that it is the data banks that will have the copies of the election tallies. Globe and PLDT has refused to allow the use of their facilities in Metro Manila, for fear of technical and security attacks on their system. (PIA-Bohol)
by magnolia_eic | Feb 17, 2010 | Election 2010, Headlines, National News
It is still too early to discuss whether President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will be fielded as the administration’s bet for Speaker of the House of Representatives, should she win as congresswoman for Pampanga’s second district.
This was what a Malacañang spokesperson said on Monday, amid claims of the ruling Lakas-Kampi-CMD members that Mrs. Arroyo would be their bet for the top House post.
Deputy presidential spokesperson Charito Planas in an interview over dzXL radio said it
is just speculation at this point. The bottom line is that the Speaker’s post is a result of an election to determine who will be the Speaker. Planas added that it was too early to tell if the President would also be part of the House majority or minority bloc.
On Monday, a report from the Philippine Star quoted Isabela Rep. Rodolfo Albano as saying that Lakas-Kampi would likely have the numbers to install Mrs. Arroyo as House Speaker. (PIA-Bohol)
by magnolia_eic | Feb 16, 2010 | Election 2010, Headlines, National News
Manila, Philippines –The topic on free condoms emerged in a presidential forum held last Monday after the Department of Health distributed free condoms at the Dangwa market to people buying flowers for their valentine.
The seven presidential candidates during the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (Focap) presidential forum, were all not in favor of such campaign by the DoH.
Sen. Richard Gordon of the Bagumbayan Party said giving away condoms was useless unless its purpose was properly expalined. “Because of poor education, Filipinos cannot even discern whether they need a condom or not,” Gordon said.
Sen. Madrigal added in agreement to Sen. Gordon, that it should have been an information-driven campaign.
Sen. Benigno Aquino III of the Liberal Party pointed out that Congress, not Malacanang, had the power over the government purse, meaning, the President had no authority over funds for the DoH, or for the condoms.
Nicanor Perlas said he was not against the use of condoms per se, but was rather concerned of why DoH was distributing them.
Meanwhile, administration bet Gilbert Teodoro said use of family planning methods, whether natural or artificial, remained the moral choice of the person concerned.
Bro. Eddie Villanueva of the Bangon Pilipinas Movement said his group maintained its opposition to the use of “all forms of abortion because it is murder per se.”
Click here for full article from Inquirer.net
by magnolia_eic | Feb 12, 2010 | Election 2010, Headlines
Kidapawan City — A Liberal Party campaigner in Carmen, North Cotabato was slain by unidentified armed men Thursday afternoon, police said Friday.
Victim Edwin Bandila, was driving a motorcycle with his wife when shot at in front of the Carmen nunicipal cemetery around 5:30 in the afternoon.
Authorities are still trying to determine the motive behind the killing. Manny Pinol, North Cotabato Vice-governor said the local LP leadership could not think of any other reason, but politics.
Click here for full article from Inquirer.net
by magnolia_eic | Feb 12, 2010 | Election 2010, Features, Opinion, Tech Talk
The May 2010 elections is the first time that counting of ballots will be automated by the COMELEC. The system is now practical with the availability of cellular service throughout most of the country. It has many advantages over the manual process but many are concerned if it will really eliminate cheating.
The Automated Elections main advantage is that it eliminates many steps taken in the past where where manipulation can happen resulting to “dagdag-bawas”.
By automating the counting, the system eliminates the tedious and very error-prone manual counting process. The public school teachers should really be happy that they don’t have to deal with it after everyone has voted because at the end of the voting period, the counting is also done because the votes are recorded as soon as the machine accepts the ballot from the voter. All voters should feed their ballots to the machine directly and not through someone else, to ensure that your ballot will not be replaced.
By automating the submission of the results to a central location, the system eliminates another error-prone and easy to manipulate procedure. In the past, the ballot count is submitted by the precincts to the municipal or city hall and then aggregated. Then the provincial results are aggregated up to the national level. It takes quite some time before the ballot count is eventually consolidated on the national level, and this gives the manipulators a lot of time to do their magic tricks. Now, the individual counting machines can submit their results to the national level on a near real-time basis thus preventing any count manipulation or errors in between the precinct and the aggregation center.
The automated system also includes audit trails which allow the authorized persons to trace any suspicious changes on the system and identify the culprit. In the manual procedure, there is limited audit trail capability, if any.
Electronic jamming systems would be impractical to setup on a scale that can significantly affect the results and may be futile because the system uses cellular service which has its own interference mitigation capability. To be effective at jamming the transmission, you would need to have a jamming system per precinct that is always on all the time. Anytime you turn it off and the automated counting machine can have a chance to send its data and it only takes a few seconds to send all the data in the machine’s memory. The best it could do is probably delay the transmission but not totally prevent it.
The technology that will be used in the May 2010 elections would certainly make it very difficult to manipulate results unless you are able to access the system directly with the proper user privileges. But even that would not be straightforward because the data storage technology used in systems like this store data in multiple copies and have multiple backups taken at regular periods stored in multiple locations. And COMELEC for sure would be wise enough to have a few of these locations undisclosed just in case the known locations are compromised.
Cheating would be very difficult to orchestrate with the automated counting system implemented. But there are still many ways to manipulate votes like vote-buying and coercion. So each Filipino should value his vote and consider it a sacred right guaranteed by the constitution of the Philippines in order to prevent or minimize this kind of manipulation. — J. Auza
