LUCENA CITY – The planned automation of the May 2010 elections might not cover the entire country or worse, a failure of election could happen, Quezon province Rep. Danilo Suarez (3rd District-Lakas).

In an interview Sunday in Unisan town, Suarez, chair of the congressional oversight committee, said his committee would invite on Wednesday the officials of the Commission on Elections, and the Smartmatic and Total Information Management, the firm contracted to supply the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) to be used for the 2010 elections, to get from them a firm commitment on the preparations for poll automation.

“I’m apprehensive with this poll automation. I’m afraid that what we might have is failure of election. I’m really worried,” Suarez, a known ally of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, told Quezon newsman.

The solon said he would suggest that the automated election in the local and national elections in May next year cover only parts of the country with Internet signal, electricity and accessible roads.

“For areas that have no power and will only use batteries and no accessible roads where teachers will walk to bring ballots and counting machines, manual voting is much better,” Suarez explained.

Suarez said he would also recommend that a minimum of at least 40 percent of the country should be covered for the poll automation to proceed.,

“There will only be partial automation. Other areas will conduct the election through manual voting,” he said.

The lawmaker also noted that the first automated election in the country will have to mobilize 48,000 computer literate teachers as election inspectors nationwide.

“Where will we get that all?” he asked.

Suarez said the government would have to pay P7.6 billion to Smartmatic for the automated counting machines, also known as the PCOS, but not all poll machines would be used in the May 2010 election.

The poll body's plan to use automated poll machines is designed to speed up the counting, transmission and canvassing of votes to prevent cheating, specifically “dagdag-bawas” or vote padding/shaving during the canvassing of election results.

A total of 80,122 precincts all over the country will have 82,200 election machines, according to Comelec.

Under the automated system, voters will shade ovals opposite pre-printed names of candidates in specially printed ballots and feed them to the machines for scanning of ballot images.

The poll machines will then count the votes and transmit results electronically from polling precincts to Comelec servers located in Metro Manila for consolidation.

At the end of the voting, the machines would also print eight copies of the election returns, some of which would be given to watchers of political parties at the precincts.

An estimated 48 million voters are expected to vote next year.