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The electronic voting system in Congress begins this week when all
the biometric gadgets have been finally installed on top of the
House members’ tables at the Plenary.
“There is a need for the Secretariat to begin
gathering the biometric data from the House members once we are
given the authorization to do so, which may take one to two
weeks,” said Rodolfo Vicerra, director general of the
Congressional Planning and Budget Office (CPBO). “Also, the
e-Voting system is awaiting the adoption of the House rules that
will govern the use of the e-voting gadgets. This is still being
studied by the Committee on Rules,” Vicerra added.
With an approved allotted budget of P15 million,
the electronic voting project is to address, among them, the problem
of absenteeism of lawmakers. The electronic device is a customized
voter terminal using secured and reliable Internet Protocal
(IP)-based communication system by InfoBahn, the winning contractor
and implementor.
“The electronic voting system at the House of
Representatives is a network of customized and dedicated computer
terminals linked via local area network [LAN] cables to a
high-powered computer server that runs the e-voting program/software
where it stores all data relative to the Plenary attendance roll
calls and voting on issues and legislature. The terminals or gadgets
combine a programmable chipset, an IP-based communication port and
biometric scanner,” Vicerra said.
According to a House press statement, “The
e-voting system will allow the Plenary to have as much as 1/5 to 1/3
of discussion time by doing away with the time-consuming roll
call.” It added, “The proposed project shall be IP-based and
will primarily employ a TCP-IP cabling system, which provides
additional flexibility and adaptability to foreseeable future
technologies that are now emerging for other IP-based systems.”
However, the main setback of this project is the
necessity to familiarize lawmakers, including technophobes, with
“inadequate computer backgrounds,” on the use of the e-Vote
gadgets, a House insider said.
-- Remedios V. Lucio
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