City Comelec Election Officer Atty. Ramil Acol. GSD FILE Photo by Cong B. Corrales.
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By CONG B. CORRALES
Associate Editor .

THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) has started training public school teachers on how to use an Android application to catch flying voters in the coming elections.

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City elections officer Ramil Acol said the Comelec has been gathering teachers since early this month to acquaint them with the Voter Registration Verification System (VRVS). The teachers will be serving in the electoral boards in the May elections.

“We are currently conducting simultaneous trainings across the province and here in the city at 40 teachers per class,” Acol said.

In the city, some 802 teachers would serve in the electoral boards in the May elections.

The VRVS is an Android application set in a tablet device that would be used to authenticate registered voters before they are allowed to vote on election day.

The technology has been provided for by Gemalto, a digital security company that focuses on digital identification and data protection in order to counter the two root causes of cyber attacks: identity theft and unencrypted data.

The VRVMs, Acol said, would be polling place-specific. This means that the data sets configured in the tablets would only include the information of the voters in the specific precinct where the tablet has been deployed. The tablet comes with a biometric slot that can capture the voters’ thumbprints.

“This system would deter flying voters kay ang fingerprint nga gi-register sa mga botante mao man ang basahon sa machine,” Acol said.

For example, when voters enter their thumbprint and no information about them comes out of the tablet, it would mean that that the particular voter is not registered to vote or is not assigned to vote in that precinct.

“Ang election day voters’ list kay black and white man gud pagkaprinta busa dili kaayo klaro ang dagway sa botante. Kini karon kay tablet man so maklaro gyud ang iyang kagwapo,” said Acol.

The system however would only be used in pilot areas across the country on election day.

In Mindanao, the system would be used in Zamboanga del Sur, including Zamboanga City; Misamis Oriental, including Cagayan de Oro City; Davao del Sur, including Davao City; and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (Barmm).

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