The president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) believes the computerized voting machines successfully used in the 2010 elections are flawed and he wants them thoroughly examined before these are used in next year’s midterm elections. Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma’s doubts about the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines echo those of Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III, who has been saying for some time that the voting machines are not perfect.
On Wednesday, Pimentel called on the country’s computer experts to join the hunt for glitches in the source codes that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will use in the machines.
Made by the Argentinian company Smartmatic International, the PCOS machine uses paper ballots and counts the votes. The machine may be turned on by using a security key entrusted to the polling precinct’s board of election inspectors.
Security pins are needed to configure the machine and show that there is no entry or vote in its memory.
The machine scans the marked ballots fed into it by voters. At the end of the balloting, the machine counts the votes and prints the returns. The returns can be electronically transmitted to the Comelec central server and the board of canvassers at the municipal, city, provincial and national levels.
Full Article: CBCP to push probe of voting machines | Inquirer News.