#6 - On current events
There has been much attention on the automated poll trial runs. While I am glad that finally it seems that COMELEC has gotten busy with the backlog (or should I say, their neglected tasks of last year?), I don't understand their seeming complacency.
Is it just me but they seem so complacent about the whole automated poll issue. Like they think it will work out fine just because it works out on the trial runs.
I don't know about you, but see, maybe that whole "yeah, it's working out right...see we just did a trial run today and it was successful" statement will probably work for my parents and grandparents at that, but not for me. I'm someone quite adept with technology, and though I may not be a programmer extraordinaire, I do know that small time simulations don't necessarily reflect large scale realities in technology.
I don't think that the success of the trial runs will mirror much of anything that could happen in the May 2010 elections. If there's anything, it probably gives us foresight on what to do and what not to do, or what we can improve on. For example: shade the circles completely, do not wrinkle papers, the signal-full areas vs. the signal-less areas, contingency plans on what to do if automation machine--God forbid--breaks down and fails. BUT the trial runs are too small a scale to actualize the whole convenience of the automation objective.
I hope they consider that on election day, not only 8 precincts will be uploading data, over a hundred will. So the reality of transmission overload is HIGHLY possible. And a whole network mayhem and mess-up could occur which could eventually lead to a failure of automated elections. It happened in Ateneo, I remember during ACP of my freshman year. They automated it, but they lacked foresight on the surge of people choosing their classes. A lot of students ended up with classes they didn't like.
And I'm worried that the people of the Philippines might end up with leaders they do not like because of this whole lack of foresight.
Sure there's the manual count, but manual counts should be the last resolve for everything especially when billions of taxpayers' money have been invested on machines that could probably cause a FAILURE of elections in this beautiful, supposedly vanguard of democracy in Asia of a country called the Philippines. Not to mention that there's still some time left for people who are responsible to do something about the situation.
Well... just saying. :)
Is it just me but they seem so complacent about the whole automated poll issue. Like they think it will work out fine just because it works out on the trial runs.
I don't know about you, but see, maybe that whole "yeah, it's working out right...see we just did a trial run today and it was successful" statement will probably work for my parents and grandparents at that, but not for me. I'm someone quite adept with technology, and though I may not be a programmer extraordinaire, I do know that small time simulations don't necessarily reflect large scale realities in technology.
I don't think that the success of the trial runs will mirror much of anything that could happen in the May 2010 elections. If there's anything, it probably gives us foresight on what to do and what not to do, or what we can improve on. For example: shade the circles completely, do not wrinkle papers, the signal-full areas vs. the signal-less areas, contingency plans on what to do if automation machine--God forbid--breaks down and fails. BUT the trial runs are too small a scale to actualize the whole convenience of the automation objective.
I hope they consider that on election day, not only 8 precincts will be uploading data, over a hundred will. So the reality of transmission overload is HIGHLY possible. And a whole network mayhem and mess-up could occur which could eventually lead to a failure of automated elections. It happened in Ateneo, I remember during ACP of my freshman year. They automated it, but they lacked foresight on the surge of people choosing their classes. A lot of students ended up with classes they didn't like.
And I'm worried that the people of the Philippines might end up with leaders they do not like because of this whole lack of foresight.
Sure there's the manual count, but manual counts should be the last resolve for everything especially when billions of taxpayers' money have been invested on machines that could probably cause a FAILURE of elections in this beautiful, supposedly vanguard of democracy in Asia of a country called the Philippines. Not to mention that there's still some time left for people who are responsible to do something about the situation.
Well... just saying. :)