Valenzuela school holds automated polls

MANILA, Philippines - Students at a public high school in Valenzuela City elected officials for next schoolyear’s student council last Friday using computerized elections.

“You beat the Comelec (Commission on Elections),” Mayor Sherwin Gatchalian was quoted as saying by Cesar Villareal, principal of the Sitero Francisco Memorial National High School in Barangay Ugong.

Gatchalian told the school’s community to keep up the good work, adding that this accomplishment inspires him to improve the city’s information communication technology program.

He promised to provide 50 computers and a technician for the computer laboratories of the city’s 17 public high schools.

Villareal also gave credit to Jameson Tan, the school’s science head teacher, and Melissa Garganta, the students’ elections adviser.

Villareal said 1,400 students participated in the electronic voting, which used software created by alumnus Vincent San Joaquin, now a computer science student at the AMA Computer College.

Villareal said the school’s computerized polls may be the first in Metro Manila and in the country.He said the process, from voting to counting, took only seven hours.

“Our focus is not so much to make history but to show the way for future voters in the country’s local and national elections. If we can do it… the national government can also conduct honest, clean and fast elections,” Villareal said.

San Joaquin, 17, began working on the software in 2007.

Villareal said a student voter only had to click an icon representing the candidate’s name for 16 individual positions. A window pops out, telling the voter to submit the vote, which is then counted. He said there was no opportunity for any cheating or any vote manipulation.

He added that should there be a power failure, a backup power supply is available and will not affect the electorial process.

Villareal said a server sums up the votes. In cases of mistakes, there is an auto-correction feature in the software that addresses this.

“You can’t add or subtract votes,” he said.