MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will test the use of Viber in the transmittal of results from municipal to provincial canvassers during the special election in Batanes.
The Nov. 28 special election is for Batanes' seat in the House of Representatives. This follows the death of Ciriaco Gato Jr., its lone legislative district's elected congressional representative, at 66.
"We have a new innovation that we will do. We will pilot test it here. We will talk to all the candidates," Comelec Chairman George Garcia said in Filipino and English in an interview with reporters after the launch of the seventh Asian Electoral Stakeholder Forum in Makati.
"Remember, [the Batanes special election] is a manual election. This is not an automated election," Garcia said.
Wave heights can suspend sea travel in Batanes which has towns located in several islands. The results of the special election will be done by the provincial board of canvassers at the provincial capitol in Basco in Batan Island.
"What we did now is we placed it in our rules that the board of canvassers itself of, for example, the town of Itbayat can transmit results through Viber," Garcia said.
"You will send the result through Viber, with the consent of the parties and the candidates and the lawyers. If they consent, that will be like election results, the accredited cellphone will send the result itself to the cellphone of the board of canvassers and that is what will be canvased without waiting for the physical copy of the statement of votes, CoC, and SoVP, no need, although these will still be sent for purposes of further verification later. So, menaing, we can expedite, we can ensure that on the night of the day of the election...we can proclaim the winning candidate," he said.
CoC stands for Certificate of Canvass while SoVP stands for Statement of Votes by Precinct.
"Now that we have modern technology, why don't we use it?" said Garcia, who also said that the Comelec was empowered by the 1987 Constitution to promulgate rules and guidelines to ensure "honest, orderly, peaceful, and transparent, and acceptable" elections.
The transmittal of the results from the barangay (village) precincts in Batanes to the municipal board of canvassers in the special election will still be physical, he said.
Garcia said that the Comelec had instructed election officers to talk, with the provincial election director of Batanes, to talk with the four candidates about the matter.
