Full biometric system pushed for new ARMM voters' listup

MANILA, Philippines - With the slated nullification of the entire voters’ list in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), an election watchdog is proposing that the biometric system is fully used for the general re-registration in the region.

Ramon Casiple, executive director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform, said the biometric system is necessary to ensure clean and honest elections in ARMM in May 2013.

“As long as there is no completed biometrics registration, there is always the risk of cheating,” Casiple said.

Casiple said the Comelec cannot just rely on the automated fingerprint identification system without the biometric data for comparison.

According to Casiple, the voters’ list would prove to be crucial in elections because it could be the only recourse to cheating. 

“It’s hard to cheat with the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines while poll protests have failed to reverse the results… Now, once you have blocked the usual venue for cheating, they will be forced to use other alternative venues,” he said.

He said he believes that the voters’ list in Maguindanao could be padded by at least 50 percent while five percent of the national list could be “ghost voters.” 

With padded voters’ list, Casiple said it would be easy to cheat in elections since flying voters no longer need to vote on election day.

“Once these names are in the official voters’ list and you have a cooperative election officer, they will be grouped in a precinct or someone will do the shadings for them, then by reporting time, the machines will report and the votes will be counted as official results,” Casiple said.

In a town of 10,000 voters, Casiple said 1,000 fake voters can already represent the margin of victory.

For this reason, Casiple said election watchdogs are keeping a close eye on the Comelec’s official voters’ list. 

“We are vigilant against cheating operations in relation to the voters’ list. We believe that many of them are padded,” he said.