Lo-tech transport for hi-tech voting equipment in ARMM polls
By Kristine L. Alave
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 19:21:00 08/02/2008
MANILA -- When the Commission on Election’s suppliers deploy their state-of-the art voting machines to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao for next week’s elections, they will rely on 19th Century transportation methods to reach the farthest towns.
Officials of the Smartmatic-Sahi Technologies Inc. and Avante International Technology Inc. said setting up the automated voting and counting machines in the country’s most underdeveloped region is a big logistical challenge.
Some villages and towns are so remote that the two companies’ technicians have to cross swamps, mountains, and seas to get the machines and ballots to ARMM’s 1.5 million voters in time for the country’s first-ever automated elections on August 11.
“We have to be creative and innovative in transporting the machines and in retrieving them after the elections,” Vince Dizon, Smartmatic-Sahi spokesman, said in a recent interview.
Dizon said the company, which will provide the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) system in Maguindanao and transmit the results from the canvassing areas to the Comelec headquarters, has made transportation arrangements with local officials to ensure that the machines arrive safely in the province and that the communication systems are in place.
In the town of South Upi, Maguindanao, for instance, Dizon said they were looking at transporting the touch-screen machines by horse or carabao because there are no paved roads leading to the school where the voting will be conducted.
“From the main municipal hall to some barangays where the schools are located, it sometimes takes two hours of travel. The problem is the roads are so bad that even 4x4 vehicles have difficulty reaching the area,” he said.
Other options include using motorcycles or habal-habal in some areas and hiring locals in hauling the machines on foot, Dizon said.
“Another problem is the Liguasan Marsh in the easternmost part of the province. Since it’s a marshland, the waters rise fast. So we are using bancas,” he said.
Dizon said his company has scheduled to take a ferry to reach the Turtle Islands off the coast of Tawi-Tawi to install the communication lines and the canvassing machines in the counting center there.
Smartmatic-Sahi will deploy around 2,300 DRE machines in Maguindanao for the elections. Another 1,000 machines will be shipped to the area as back-ups.
Leo Querubin, Avante’s project director, said their technicians were scheduled to go to Mapun Island, Tawi-Tawi on August 1 to set up the precinct.
He said the town is their biggest challenge since it is 18 hours away from Zamboanga City and is closer to Malaysia than to the Philippines.
Avante will supply the specially-printed ballots that residents of Lanao Del Sur, Tawi-Tawi, Sulu, Basilan, and Shariff Kabunsuan will use on August 11.
The ballots will be fed into the Optical Reader Mark machines that will record the votes and transmit the results to the counting centers.
Kevin Chung, Avante president, said transporting and setting up their counting machines are relatively easy because they will be stationed in accessible towns with telephone lines or Internet connections.
“We have five provinces and some of the places are remote. But the fact is the counting station is different from the voting stations. The precincts may be very remote, but the counting centers are in schools with reasonable infrastructure,” he explained.
Officials of the two companies said the machines can withstand the rigors of bumpy travel and will arrive in their destinations intact.
When they tried sending the machines to South Upi for a trial run, Dizon said the machines held well and they were able to do a full diagnostic, Dizon said.
Since the DRE machines are encased in hard plastic and packed tight, the contents will not shift even if the case is dropped, he added.
Chung, on the other hand, made assurances that the integrity of the ballots will be intact when they reach the voting stations.
According to the Avante executive, each ballot has a unique and long alpha-numeric security code that will be difficult to cipher. Chung noted that the OMR will automatically recognize and void a fake ballot.
The Comelec and the two private companies will start moving the election paraphernalia to ARMM by Monday, despite talk of postponing the elections from lawmakers.
Some machines were sent to the region last week. The remaining automated counting and voting machines will be fielded starting August 4 and the last deployment will be on August 6 while the sealing of the automated election system will be on August 8, Comelec executive director Jose Tolentino said.
“So basically, we are more or less, 95 to 98 percent ready for August 11,” he said.
Tolentino said security arrangements were in place. “In fact the AFP Western Mindanao Command will be deploying 5,545 personnel, while the Eastern Mindanao Command, 5,700. PNP has likewise committed 7,596 personnel,” Tolentino said.
He said the Comelec, the military, and the police have identified 278 election areas of immediate concern and 703 election areas of concern for the ARMM elections.
|
