By Leslie Ann Aquino
To further develop the electoral system of voting, the Commission on Elections is automating the system of verification of voter registration, which will be pilot-tested in the May 2019 midterm polls.
(MANILA BULLETIN)
Comelec Special Bids and Awards Committee Chairman Thaddeus Hernan said the automation of the voter registration verification aims to aid electoral boards or Board of Election Inspectors in verifying the identity of a voter presenting himself before the board.
"This is levelling up, sort of upgrading our usual manual process of verification using the printed copies of Election Day and the computerized voters list, but this time we automate using a system or machine," he said Wednesday during the Opening of Bids for the voter registration verification project.
"There will be no more discretion on the part of the electoral board or the BEIs as to the identity of the voters because a mere finger scanning of a voter will show that he or she is really the registered voter as listed for that particular precinct and this will be shown in a monitor," explained Hernan.
He stressed that the machines that will be used for this will be different from the vote counting machines.
This is why, Hernan said, part of the deliverables of the provider to be awarded with the P1.16-billion contract would be to come up with a single voter registration verification management system that shall effectively and efficiently manage the data for all cities and municipalities.