MANILA, Philippines—The Commission on Elections (Comelec) wants to change several provisions in the Omnibus Election Code in preparation for the 2010 automated polls.

Comelec chairman Jose Melo said on Monday they would ask Congress to lengthen voting hours and allow early voting for 2010 so that the Comelec could maximize the election machines they would use for the computerized national elections.

“We will have to have a law for the longer voting hours and the early voting,” Melo told the media after his opening remarks at the Election Technology Conference and Vendor Exhibition on Monday.

Increasing the voting hours and instituting early voting mechanisms nationwide would allow more voters to use the machines, Melo explained. Comelec said at least 40 million Filipino voters will troop to the polls on May 2010.

“We will have to economize the machines so that we can save even a little bit,” he said. The Comelec said it would need at least P21 billion for the election machines.

“We will devise a system for early voting. For instance the ballots could be put in a vault in Central Bank until election time,” he said.

Melo said he was aware of criticisms that early voting could give politicians a chance to tamper with the results but vowed to "devise something that cannot be questioned.”

On the longer voting hours, Melo said they have been mulling extending the current 3 p.m. deadline to 6 p.m. to allow more voters in precincts.

Both changes would have to be made through congressional legislation.

Meanwhile, Senator Richard Gordon, chairman of the joint committee on the automation of the elections, said he would support both proposals and said he would file the bills in the Senate.

In his speech at the conference on Monday, Gordon said he was backing the proposal to have voters in remote areas vote using the election machines a month before those in urban centers.

This way, he said, the machines could still be transported to other areas and be used by other voters.

“The machines are expensive. I can only buy 10,000 machines so I'll do early voting so that at a certain point, I can pull out the machines,” Gordon said.

Both Melo and Gordon hailed the conference on Monday, which featured 18 vendors of electronic voting systems.

The conference was organized by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and was attended by vendors from various countries that set up computerized voting systems in Europe and in countries like Mexico and the United States.

Melo declined to give his assessments of the machines he saw at the fair.

Previous interviews with the poll chairman said the Comelec has been looking at the possibility of using direct recording electronic system and the paper-based optical mark reader systems.

“I’m very confident that whatever it is, we’ll be automated. It's going to be full automation,” Melo said.