By LUZ RIMBAN
SEN. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III won the presidency at a mock election held to demonstrate the use of automated voting which will be done nationwide for the first time in May 2010.
The mock voting took place Friday at the 6th MediaNation Summit, an annual gathering of members of the news media organized by the non-government organization Pagbabago.
Twenty media practitioners were selected to test the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) during a session in which Miguel Avila, Technical Support Manager of Smartmatic-TIM Corp., explained the automated voting system.
The PCOS machine showed the count: Ten out of the 20 voters chose Aquino, three chose Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero, three chose Sen. Manuel Villar, while Vice President Noli de Castro got one vote. Three ballots were invalidated
Smartmatic-TIM won the P7.2 billion poll automation contract.
In his briefing before the mock voting, Avila allayed fears that the system had many loopholes that could lead to a failure of elections. He said Smartmatic-TIM would provide enough special pens, although the machine also reads regular pencil and pen marks.
Avila added that the company would provide enough power supply to last more than the 11 hours that precincts will be open for voting, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., on election day.
