Biometrics bill hurdles Third Reading at the House

Wednesday, 25 May 2011 09:02

House Bill 908, authored by Rep. Susan Yap from the Second District of Tarlac, has recently hurdled Third Reading at the House of Representatives.
It has already been deemed that the use of biometrics in voters' registration is a reliable way of confirming the identity of a person. This involves electronic recording of the applicants photograph and signature as well as his or her fingerprints which are distinctive characteristics.

Our nation is already on the crossroads towards a modern elections system. The entire world lauded us for our very first national automated elections last May 2010, which has been generally successful.

For these reasons, and with the enthusiasm brought about by this achievement, the principal author of the bill on biometrics voters' registration, Rep. Susan Yap of the Second District of Tarlac urged that "we must move forward to develop a system towards the full automation of election starting from registration, to maintaining an electronic database of registered voters, and to the automated recognition of voters in their respective precincts come election."

Republic Act 8189 or the Voters Registration Act of 1996 already declared that, "It is the policy of the State to systematize the present method of registration in order to establish a clean, complete, permanent and updated list of voters."

The COMELEC has already started using biometrics in the continuing registration of December 2008, upon its issuance of Resolution 8514, in preparation for the 2010 presidential elections. One Data Capturing Machine (DCM) has been deployed in every city or municipal office of election officers. Under the said issuance, each registrant has to submit himself or herself before the election officer for the capture of his or her photograph, fingerprint, and signature.

In recognition of the need to strengthen and institutionalize this policy, Yap believed the importance of passing the bill. According to her, "of the estimated 48 million registered voters, 24 million registrants, who have not undergone the biometrics process, will have to register anew or validate their registration. They will be required to appear before the election officer of their place of registration to verify their record and undergo the biometrics process."

In addition to the use of biometrics in the registration process, this bill seeks the use of this biometrics technology in the voting process. A system shall be established wherein electronic data generated by biometric registration shall be available to election officers at the precinct level for them to identify the voter (Section 10).

To implement this project, a single, official, centralized, and interactive computerized national voter registration list or database will be created. Every registrant is assigned a unique key to identify him or her. Also, this list shall be coordinated with other agency databases hence, improving its veracity and usage. This system will ultimately cure the perennial problem of multiple registrants and flying voters.

"Our dream of a fully modernized election system is already at hand. We only need to improve on what we have started in the 2010 elections and never look back from there," Yap concluded.