THIS year’s central and local student council elections will switch back to electronic voting and canvassing, the UST Central Commission on Elections (Comelec) bared on Thursday.
In a news conference, Comelec Chairman Arvin Bersonda said the poll body reverted to electronic voting as it would be more convenient and cost-effective compared with the manual voting system.
“Our goal is to establish a safe, secure, and reliable online electronic voting system [and also] for collecting, storing and canvassing… to minimize the issues on limited manpower, extensive canvassing time,” Bersonda said.
The server for the electronic system will be supplied by the Santo Tomas e-Service Providers (STePs), he added.
Comelec opted for manual voting and canvassing last year after the 2016 electronic voting system was riddled with technical problems, wherein the proclamation of elected officers was delayed because of a glitch in the downloading of votes from the e-Learning Access Program, the online learning system of the University.
Angel Luis Santos, student project manager of this year’s electronic voting system, said the new system went through a series of tests to ensure the security of votes.
“Sa system namin, may mga access levels. May limit `yung mga access ng mga tao. `Yung system, maa-access mo lang kapag nasa isang UST Computer Lab ka, so ‘di siya [ma-access] ng hackers via Internet,” Santos said.
The polls will remain independent from the Office for Student Affairs, said Allan Hernandez, staff for student activities.
“The flow will come from the Comelec. The developers interpret what is necessary. My intervention is I make sure the system will not be tampered with. I also have a background in programming,” Hernandez said.
A mock election will be held on March 9 to test the capacity of the system to receive and handle votes.
Regular elections will run from April 11 to 21, where the proclamation of the new set of officers will also take place.
No ‘Abstain’ votes
Comelec has removed the option to “Abstain” from choices in the ballot this year in compliance with the order of the Central Judiciary Board last year, which said the Comelec violated the UST Student’s Election Code (USEC) of 2011 by including “Abstain” on the 2017 ballot.
READ: Central Judiciary Board orders Comelec to proclaim CSC candidates with highest number of votes
“[T]he abstentions should not have been counted or tallied because they are not votes,” the board resolution read.
Article 10 Section 5 of the USEC states that the ballot shall contain the printed names of candidates, their positions and their parties , a box before each candidate’s name, serial number and the instructions.
