March 13th, 2010 by Malayang Halalan
Singapore included in automated polls for overseas absentee voting
By Pia Lee-Brago
The Philippine Star March 09, 2010
MANILA, Philippines – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has decided to include Singapore in the conduct of automated elections for overseas absentee voting (OAV), the Philippine Embassy in Singapore said yesterday.
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Hong Kong was [...]
March 8th, 2010 by Malayang Halalan
If it’s good for the United Nations, it ought to be good for the Philippines.
After all criticism thrown at Smartmatic and Smarmatic-TIM, its international reputation doesn’t seem to be suffering one bit. Other countries continue to trust the company whose aim is to provide “technology for all”.
In this latest bit of news, the Republic of [...]
March 8th, 2010 by Malayang Halalan
Bathsheba Valenzuela considers herself an expert on automated voting and scoffs at people who say that using the 25-inch-long ballot and the voting machine is fraught with difficulties for senior citizens.
“It’s easy as long as you follow the instructions. I’m 58, yes, but why would it be difficult for me?” she said after participating in a mock election conducted by GMA News at SM Mall of Asia in Pasay City.
March 6th, 2010 by Malayang Halalan
In his book, The Opinion Makers, Moore makes the startling conclusion that pollsters “do not measure public opinion, they manufacture it.” He anchors this contention on the practice of polling firms to gloss over “voter indecision” during an election campaign. Moore notes:
Moore points out: “There is crisis in public-opinion polling today, a silent crisis that no one wants to talk about. The problem lies not in the declining response rates and increasing difficulty in obtaining representative sample, though these are issues the polling industry has to address. The problem lies, rather, in the refusal of media polls to tell the truth about those surveyed and about the larger electorate. Rather than tell us the essential facts about the public, they feed us a fairy-tale picture of a completely rational, all-knowing and fully engaged citizenry. They studiously avoid reporting on widespread public apathy, indecision and ignorance. The net result is conflicting poll results and a distortion of public opinion that challenges the credibility of the whole polling enterprise. Nowhere is this more often the case than in election polling.”
March 1st, 2010 by Malayang Halalan
Cesar Flores, President of Smartmatic Asia Pacific said that the last 13,580 units of PCOS machines arrived at the International Container Terminal Services, Inc. (ICTSI) on February 27 completing the required number of machines to be used for the May 10 automated elections.
“We are proud to announce that all the PCOS machines are already in the Philippines, and the implementation calender is being kept as planned” Flores said.
