2010 automated polls budget updates III

The Senate passed the House-approved P11.3-billion supplemental budget for the automation of the elections on May 10, 2010 on Wednesday midnight. Thus, they have beaten the deadline.

“We are ready. There will be full automation nationwide,” COMELEC Chairman Jose Melo said in a press conference.

Instead of writing on ballots, voters will shade the spaces allotted for the names of candidates. The ballots will then be inserted into the optical machine readers to be placed in clustered precincts all over the country.

Although exhausted from almost seven hours of debate, main proponents Senators Edgardo Angara and Richard Gordon beamed after the presiding officer, Senate President Pro Tempore Jinggoy Estrada, banged the gavel to adopt House Bill No. 5715, which the House of Representatives passed on Monday.

Angara said the supplemental budget was a landmark measure because it buried the electoral system introduced in the country since democratic elections started at the turn of the 20th century.

“It is the beginning of a new era of modern elections. I’m glad that my colleagues have embraced this march to modernization of the electoral process,” he said.

With nine of the 13 senators voting to support poll automation, Angara and Gordon declared in separate interviews after the plenary vote that the approval of the measure marked the end of the manual counting of votes in the country.