Senate passes poll automation budget

In the wee hours of the morning on Thursday, the Philippine Senate, voting 9-4 with no abstentions, approved on its third and final reading the 11.3 billion supplemental budget bill for the implementation of automation in the 2010 elections.
The Senate adopted the House of Representatives' version of the bill, but added a provision to "guarantee transparency and accuracy in the selection of the relevant technology of the voting machines to be used for the May 10, 2010 automated national and local elections," according to GMANews.tv. The bill had been approved by the House on Monday night.

Senator Edgardo Angara presided over the deliberations after the Senate had convened a Committee of the Whole, reports ABS-CBNNews.com. In favor of the bill were Senators Angara, Rodolfo Biazon, Richard Gordon, Gregorio Honasan, Manuel "Lito" Lapid, Loren Legarda, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Aquilino Pimentel Jr. and Ramon Revilla, while Senators Francis Escudero, Benigno Aquino III, Jose "Jinggoy" Estrada and Jamby Madrigal voted against it. Senators Escudero and Pangilinan had also earlier voted against convening the Committee of the Whole.

Escudero had earlier said that he was not against poll automation per se, but he believed that automation would be "futile" if the COMELEC did not purge the voters' list of flying voters and ghost voters first, says Business Mirror. He added that the COMELEC should also demonstrate before Congress the effectiveness of the machines to be used, so as to avoid repeating past mistakes.

In his sponsorship speech, Angara stated that he believed poll automation was "imperative in order to respond to the crying need of our people-credibility of elections and legitimacy of leadership," notes Inquirer.net. With the new system, COMELEC now expects to be able to proclaim the winners of the 2010 Elections in three days after Election Day, which is scheduled on 20 April 2010 in the ARMM and 10 May 2010 in the rest of the country, GMANews.tv states.

The Senate passed the bill before starting its Lenten break on Friday, 7 March 2009.

Photo "Our dreams cannot fit in their ballot boxes" by synaethesia on flickr; licensed under Creative Commons BY-ND-2.0.

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