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Saudi OFWs to Use Automated Polling System
Julie Javellana-Santos
INS, Arab News
MANILA, 30 November 2003 — Filipinos in Saudi Arabia will be among the first to use the automated voting and counting system when the Philippines holds its first absentee voting exercise abroad next year, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has said.
Florentino Tuason, commissioner in charge of overseas absentee voting, said Riyadh, Al-Khobar, and Jeddah were among 16 of the Philippines’ 87 overseas diplomatic posts that have been allowed to use the automated system.
The other posts are Brunei, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Taipei, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha, Kuwait, Saipan, Athens, Milan, and Rome.
He said these posts had at least 6,000 registered voters and would have at least one automated counting machine.
Tuason said he recently discussed with the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) secretariat of the Department of Foreign Affairs the allocation of machines according to the number of voters and the formation of special boards to conduct the elections at diplomatic posts.
“There will be one Special Board of Reception and Custody Group for every 20,000 voters, with subgroups for posts with a large number of OAV voters like Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia,” he said. “For the Special Board of Election Inspectors, it’s one for every 4,000 voters for voting, one for every 500 voters for manual counting, and one for every 6,000 voters for automated voting. There would be one Special Board of Canvassers for every post.”
Members of the Philippine diplomatic community who will make up these boards are to be trained Dec. 17-19 on the details of the conduct of the elections, Tuason said.
He also said the Comelec had also allotted 35 automated counting machines for overseas voters, including eight as standby equipment.
Of the estimated 7.53 million Filipino contract workers, permanent residents and “irregular” migrants abroad, only 362,511 have signed up during the two-month registration period for the OAV. Each application for registration is subject to approval by the Comelec.
Of the total number of registrants, 97,554 were based in Saudi Arabia. China, mainly in Hong Kong, was a close second with 90,850, followed by Singapore with 24,009.
Italy had 21, 775 registrants, the United Arab Emirates had 20,449, Kuwait registered 15,030, Taiwan had 11,620, Brunei had 9,697, Japan had 9,417, and the Marianas Islands recorded 7,044. The remaining 53,136 listed up in other countries, including the United States.
The higher turnout of registrants in Saudi Arabia had come as a surprise to officials in Manila, who were expecting those in countries with lesser restrictions to do better. Analysts have attributed the phenomenal turnout to effective coordination between the Philippine mission and community organizations in the Kingdom.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
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