Yesterday the Philippines ran their tri-annual mid-term elections. By all accounts they've been very successful. Elections are a massive affair for this country with 100+ million people, 7140 islands, and, 78,000 election precincts, many without made roads and basically only accessible by water.
The elections were indeed heavily electronic, utilizing over 78,000 black boxes (precinct count optical scanners). The elections are for all levels of government, and, each voter is given multiple ballots to colour-in and then insert in the voting machines. The machines report the voting counts via wireless. Comelec are allowing local precincts to announce the local results and promise Federal results tomorrow, 48 hours after voting began. Apparently over 60% of registered people actually voted with few problems at voting centers reported - something quite common in previous elections. In the past it was weeks before all (well most) of the paper ballot-boxes got to counting centres, and ballot-box substitution was always a problem. The black-box source code was made available to all political parties the week before elections and no party has reported any code problems. All in all it looks as if this has been a real win for the country and democracy. As the elections were only held yesterday, it's still early days, but, :D Info: http://www.comelec.gov.ph Media: http://technology.inquirer.net/25335/its-inevitable-200-to-300-poll- machines-will-conk-out-smartmatic Cheers, Stephen Official Philippines Emmigrant now Australian Winter Resident. Think white sand & palmtrees :D Message sent using MelbPC WebMail Server _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
