GUS LAGMAN
SHORTLY before the 2013 elections, a group of Filipino IT practitioners, all sufficiently knowledgeable about election systems, did a cost/benefit study of what could be a “most suitable” automated system for the Philippines. Included in the study were the Direct Recording Electronic System (DRE), Optical Mark Recognition System (OMR), under which are the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) and Central Count Optical Scan (CCOS), the Automated Election System with Enhanced Transparency and Accuracy (AES/ETA), and the Pure Manual System (PMS). Internet Voting (IV) was not part of that study, but is included in this article, anyway.