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By Ike Suarez, Correspondent
The University of the Philippines (UP),traditional bellwether
for political developments in the country, will hold computerized
student council elections for the very first time in all its 25
colleges and institutes in its Diliman, Quezon City campus this
February 25, it was learned by The Manila Times.
The Halalan Voting System, developed by students
belonging to the University of the Philippines Linux Users Group
(UNPLUG), shall be the automated election software used. It shall
run on Dinette, UP’s Internet-based wide area network (WAN).
Halalan shall use the colleges’ and
institutes’ respective computer laboratories as precincts where
students can vote. It will interface with the database of UP CRS,
the university’s computerized system, to verify whether or not a
would-be-voter is an undergraduate or graduate student and therefore
qualified to cast his or her ballot.
There is a total of 23,000 students enrolled in
the Quezon City campus. Student council elections are for
university-wide and college/institute-specific positions even as
each college and institute also has its own local student council.
Elections for all positions are held on the same day in line with UP
tradition.
Results this February 25 shall be known within
15 to 20 minutes unlike in past UP student council elections where
due to the manual method used, results were known only very early
the next morning.
Halalan voting concept
Halalan shall be housed in an IBM System P5510
Express Server installed in the UP College of Engineering’s
department of electrical and electronics engineering building where
courses in computer science and engineering are taught. UNPLUG had
won this computer as a prize in an international contest on Open
Source Concepts in September 2006. The Halalan Voting system was the
concept submitted online to the New Hampshire-based Software Freedom
International.
This NGO sponsors each year on Software Freedom
Day a contest on concepts that advance its advocacy of greater use
of Open Source programs for social and community uplift worldwide.
The Halalan Voting System first developed in 2003 by UNPLUG members
then, won the prize for Best Plan for Open Source Deployment on Web
Server for Community Benefit. Members of this Linux enthusiasts’
club submitted technical details to contest organizers over the
Internet.
Upon the server’s shipment in early 2007,
UNPLUG members arranged to have it installed in the UP EEE building.
Halalan had been pilot-tested in a few UP
Diliman colleges during the 2006 and 2007 student council elections.
UNPLUG President Rystraum Fabe Gomez told The Manila Times that the
Boosier Community College, part of the University of Louisiana
system, is now also using a modified version of their relational
database management software in this US college’s own student
council elections. Making this possible is that Open Source software
available on the Internet are free to be downloaded, modified, and
used by any interested party.
At the technical presentation held recently at
the UP College of Engineering by the UP Diliman Office of Student
Affairs (OSA), Vice Chancellor Elizabeth Enriquez told those present
that the original concept called for enabling all UP students to
vote from anywhere via the Internet. This is possible because the UP
CRS enables students to register from anywhere in the world, as long
as they have access to a computer with an online connection. The
student’s PIN and password would be needed for this process.
But Vice Chancellor Enriquez, OSA head, said
that there were objections to this on the ground that this would
take away the social dimensions of voting. Thus, Halalan had been
tweaked to enable UP Diliman students to vote only from the computer
laboratories of the colleges and institutes. However, they would
still be able to do so from the computer laboratory nearest them and
not necessarily their home college.
The computerized voting process
OSA through the various college electoral
boards, which are made up of faculty members and students, has over
the decades administered UP student council elections. UP’s
liberal and political traditions have caused these to be impartially
and honestly done.
Under the Halalan Voting System, a UP Diliman
student shall go to any computer laboratory on February 25 and
present to the poll clerk there his/her identification card or
registration form, the latter called by generations of UP Students
as UP Form 5. Upon online verification with the UP CRS by the poll
clerk, he/she then goes to an unoccupied computer to encode his/her
student number and a password the clerk had issued.
Once logged in, an electronic ballot shall then
appear. It shall contain the list of candidates for university-wide
position as well as the list of candidates in the voter’s specific
home college for student council positions there. The voter then
clicks on the box beside each of the candidates of his or her
choice. Afterwards, he/she clicks on one box to confirm his or her
ballot or clicks on another box to modify his or her vote.
The voter shall have confirmed his or her ballot
when he/she shall have clicked on the confirm box and then writing a
specified text on the catch box. The latter had been installed to
prevent automated scripts from writing on the electronic ballots.
Once a voter has confirmed his/her ballot, he/she is then logged
off.
According to Gomez, average voting time for each
voter would be three to four minutes. By contrast, voting the manual
way would require at list 30 minutes for the voter to fill up
his/her ballot.
The computer laboratories shall be open from
8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Should there be power outages, the method for
voting shall to back to the manual system.
Over the decades, observers have
considered UP as a laboratory for future trends in Philippine
politics. UP student council elections have also served as breeding
grounds for the country’s future political leaders.
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