Joey De Venecia says automated polls vulnerable to cheating
Senatorial candidate Joey de Venecia III of the Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) believes there would be cheating in the first-ever automated election in the country this coming May 10, 2010.
In fact, De Venecia, the whistle-blower in the aborted P329 million ZTE broadband deal, said, “it will be so easy to cheat.”
“I’m an advocate of poll automation but I’m scared that the government’s poll automation system through the Smartmatic-TIM will fail,” De Venecia, who claims to be an expert in Information Technology (IT), said.
De Venecia said the program of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machine that will be used in the automated election could be easily hacked or jammed by computer wizards.
He said, the claim of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) that the automated election is fraud-proof could not be relied upon. “The initial tests conducted on the PCOS machines were even a failure,” De Venecia said referring to the mock polls conducted in several areas in the country to test the counting machines.
“They should have tested poll automation first in Metro Manila if it will work, doing it on the national scale for the first time is very risky,” he added.
De Venecia, son of former House Speaker Jose De Venecia Jr., was in Iloilo City yesterday to meet with supporters as well as political leaders.
The young De Venecia said his main advocacy in running for senator is for every Filipino household to have a computer and access to the internet.
He believes that through IT the country can achieve dramatic economic growth that will life it out of third world status.
De Venecia III became nationally known when he exposed the graft-tainted ZTE-national broadband network project and courageously testified in the Senate, exposing high officials. His expose led to the cancellation of the project and saved the Filipino people from a scandalous P16-billion foreign loan.
