It might come as expected to a lot of us by now that the Comelec’s automated election system (AES) encounters one problem after another. Recently, news came out that the markings on the ballots for the May polls are unreadable by the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines that will be used in the upcoming national and local elections. According to the Comelec itself, errors in the ultraviolet (UV) markings printed on the ballots are due to the high-speed printing process used by Smartmatic.

With less than 100 days left before the May 2010 elections, the implementation of the automated election system or AES of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) continues to tread in dangerous waters. Volunteers from the Computer Professionals Union (CPU) witnessed the field test of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) in Pateros and Taguig on January 29. We are sharing the following excerpts from the CPU volunteers’ report.