Elections

MANILA, Philippines – Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are pushing for online voting and other amendments in the existing provisions of the Overseas Absentee Voting Law. Ellene Sana, Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA) executive director, said the Senate should immediately pass the proposed amendments on absentee voting law to enable more Filipinos abroad to practice their…

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) released on Tuesday the guidelines on the filing of certificates of candidacies (COC) for the May 2013 midterm polls. The Comelec said the filing of COCs will be from October 1 to 5 from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and that there will be no extension. The Comelec will release…

The overseas absentee voting (OAV) law has been dismally implemented despite the huge expenses being proposed by the Commission of Elections (Comelec) and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) for that purpose, Sen. Franklin Drilon said.

Manila, Philippines – Less than 50 percent of persons with disabilities (PWDs) who cast their votes in the May 2010 elections received assistance, a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey showed.

MANILA, Philippines – President Aquino confirmed yesterday the imminent coalition of the ruling Liberal Party with the Nacionalista Party and the Nationalist People’s Coalition to field common candidates in the May 2013 senatorial elections.

MANILA, Philippines – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will work double time to reach its target of registering some one million overseas absentee voters (OAV) for the 2013 midterm polls.

ABOUT 20 million people are at risk of being excluded by the Commission on Elections from the 2013 elections if House Bill 3469 becomes a law. The bill introduced by Tarlac Rep. Susan A. Yap, Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus B. Rodriguez and Abante Mindanao Rep. Maximo B. Rodriguez, Jr. may be passed by 2013…

Manila, Philippines – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) yesterday said it will strive to modernize, reform and redeem the integrity of the agency through a five-year program.

MANILA, Philippines – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) yesterday asked those who are qualified as voters to sign up when the continuing registration of voters resumes from April 1 to Oct. 31.

WASHINGTON – A successful election in the Philippines in May was one of a few “bright spots” in the annual survey of political rights and civil liberties around the world, said Freedom House, a Washington-based non-government organization.

MANILA, Philippines – The year 2010 was a rare one that saw the election of an unlikely president, Benigno Aquino III, who won a six-year term to high office in the country’s first automated polls.

MANILA, Philippines―Former president Macapagal-Arroyo has filed a bill seeking to amend the Overseas Absentee Voting Act to encourage more migrant Filipino workers to participate in the 2013 polls.

MANILA, Philippines – 2010 was a banner year for the Commission on Elections (Comelec), primarily due to the success of the country’s first automated polls last May 10.

Editor’s note: The Manila Times today publishes the fifth part of the serialization of Mr. Monsod’s assessment of the May 2010 automated polls. The assessment was delivered on November 9, 2010, at the Ateneo de Manila Rockwell campus in Rockwell, Makati City, as a lecture, under the Jaime V. Ongpin Foundation Lecture Series.

ANALYSIS Editor’s note: The Manila Times today publishes the fourth part of the serialization of Mr. Monsod’s assessment of the May 2010 automated polls. The assessment was delivered on November 9, 2010, at the Ateneo de Manila Rockwell campus in Rockwell, Makati City, as a lecture, under the Jaime V. Ongpin Foundation Lecture Series.

Editor’s note: The Manila Times today publishes the third part of the serialization of Mr. Monsod’s assessment of the May 2010 automated polls. The assessment was delivered on November 9, 2010, at the Ateneo de Manila Rockwell campus in Rockwell, Makati City, as a lecture, under the Jaime V. Ongpin Foundation Lecture Series.

Editor’s note: The Manila Times today publishes the third part of the serialization of Mr. Monsod’s assessment of the May 2010 automated polls. The assessment was delivered on November 9, 2010, at the Ateneo de Manila Rockwell campus in Rockwell, Makati City, as a lecture, under the Jaime V. Ongpin Foundation Lecture Series.

Editor’s note: The Manila Times today publishes the second part of the serialization of Mr. Monsod’s assessment of the May 2010 automated polls. The assessment was delivered on November 9, 2010, at the Ateneo de Manila Rockwell campus in Rockwell, Makati City, as a lecture, under the Jaime V. Ongpin Foundation Lecture Series.

One news item that should have landed in the front pages of newspapers and given equal if not more prominence than the betting odds in the cruel Pacquiao-Margarito boxing bout or the intriguing love life of P-Noy is the assessment of the May 10, 2010 automated elections by former COMELEC Chairman Christian Monsod. Once more…

The Manila Times today begins to serialize Mr. Monsod’s assessment of the May 2010 automated polls, which was delivered on November 9, 2010, at the Ateneo de Manila Rockwell campus in Rockwell, Makati City, as a lecture, under the Jaime V. Ongpin Foundation Lecture Series.

Voters complain about long lines, missing names MANILA, Philippines—Peaceful and orderly but with the same old problems. Although no major election-related violent incidents were reported during Monday’s conduct of the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections in Metro Manila, the usual complaints were aired by voters.

Despite a Supreme Court ruling ordering the Commission on Elections to release to several groups involved in checking on the integrity of the automated election system adopted by the Comelec on May 10, 2010, the source code and other pertinent documents for their testing purposes, the poll body has still not done so, and will…

The government has started penalizing senior citizens for its inability to raise revenues. A few days after Malacañang said it would not give priority to a proposal to remove the 12 percent value added tax (VAT) exemption enjoyed by the elderly, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) had stricken off such privilege on water and…

MANILA, Philippines – Seven in 10 Filipinos believe the results of the May 10 national elections are more credible than those of previous elections, a recent non-commissioned survey by polling firm Pulse Asia showed.     

PERIODICALLY, POLLSTERS have the pleasure of announcing good news, which offsets the pain, roughly as periodic, of announcing news not so good. One of the good days was Wednesday (July 28), when Social Weather Stations reported high acclaim for the country’s first use of the automated election system (AES), based on its June 2010 national…

MANILA, Philippines — The random manual audit of 1,145 clustered precincts showed that the audit of the presidential, vice-presidential, congressional, gubernatorial, and mayoral races held up against the accuracy rate determined by the National Statistics Office.

HONG KONG – They held elections within days of each other: The Philippines, a lively democracy where politicians get shot dead in the street and Britain, the rock solid ‘mother of all parliaments’.

Interestingly, the Federal Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany ruled (on March 3, 2009) that the use of voting machines must “meet the constitutional requirements of the principle of the public nature of elections.” The principal basis for this ruling was that “all essential steps of an election… [must be] subject to the…

Contrary to what the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Smartmatic-TIM Corp., the service provider, claim, the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel), in its report released yesterday, said the May 10 elections were not as transparent and secure.

THE COMMISSION on Elections (Comelec) will coordinate with Education officials to include voter education in the curriculum, a poll official said yesterday, in preparation for the October elections for barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan officials.