THE inventors of the indigenous automated voting system TAPAT (Transparent Election System) gave a demonstration of how it works at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila this week, and impressed those who participated in the “mock voting,” beginning with Commission on Elections Chairman Andres Bautista, Commissioner Rowena Guanzon, National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera and cinema icon Nora Aunor. I failed to attend the demonstration, but spoke to many who did and asked Dr. Nelson Celis, who had worked with Engineer Arnold Villasanta and Prof. Toti Casino of Philippine Computer Society in developing the model, to replay the demo on my weekly TV program (Una sa Lahat) on Global News Network (Destiny Cable) this Sunday evening.

TAPAT has all the virtues which the Optical Mark Reader (OMR) or precinct count optical scan (PCOS) voting machine being peddled by the Venezuelan marketing firm Smarmatic does not have, and none of the PCOS machines’ notorious defects. First of all, it has all the security and safety features and accuracy mechanisms which the Comelec had illegally removed from the PCOS machine in 2010 and 2013. These include the ultra violet scan, the voter verification system, the digital signature, and so forth.

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