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In a first for the Philippines' cumbersome
electoral process, Filipinos working in Singapore can use the
Internet to vote for their candidates in May mid-term elections, the
service provider said.
Spanish technology firm Scytl
said on its website that the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) in
Manila has awarded the firm a contract to conduct the Philippines'
first online voting.
Filipinos in tech-savvy Singapore
will be the first to try the system.
"The COMELEC has awarded a
contract to Scytl to carry out the first Internet election in the
Philippines," the company said.
With just several clicks of the
computer mouse, the estimated 27,000 Filipino voters in Singapore
can cast ballots from their homes or at Internet cafes, instead of
lining up at polling booths in the embassy.
The Today newspaper said
Wednesday that those without access to computers can still go to the
embassy to cast ballots at terminals to be set up there.
Filipinos will elect members of
the Senate and House of Representatives as well as provincial and
town officials in the May 14 vote.
Singapore has been chosen as a
test site for the electronic voting project because of its high
Internet penetration rate, the newspaper said.
The plan is to expand Internet
voting to other countries and cities where there are large
communities of overseas Filipino workers, it added.
More than eight million
Filipinos, nearly a 10th of the population, are working abroad.
Since many Filipinos in Singapore
are maids, embassy officials told the newspaper they hope employers
will allow domestic helpers to use their home computers in order to
vote.
Under the Philippines' manual
voting process, a voter writes the name of each candidate on a paper
ballot which is counted by hand.
The laborious process, in which
some results can take weeks or months to be known, has given rise to
opportunities for cheating and buying of votes.
Last year the Philippine Congress
passed a law authorising partial computerised elections.
--AFP
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