By Arlie Calalo

THE chairman of the Commission on Elections yesterday shot down calls for a return to manual voting in the 2010 elections, saying it is against the law on election automation.

?What they are proposing is against the law. It is against Republic Act 9369 [Automated Election System],? Comelec Chairman Jose Melo told reporters. ?That is the main point.?

Melo, a former Supreme Court justice, said the open election system or manual voting is also vulnerable to dagdag-bawas (vote padding-and-shaving) system.

Under the election automation law, the voting, counting, canvassing and transmission of votes should move away from the manual system, Melo said. ?The election law [Republic Act 9369] also mandates that election returns should be produced by the voting machine and not manually.?

Open election ultimately defeats the purpose of automating the electoral system, Melo said. ?Under OES, the voting will be back to manual system and also with the encoding. This could be prone to human error or even dagdag-bawas, what is going to happen is that we could have an automated dagdag-bawas.?

At least 38 members of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines called on the poll body to dump the modern but ?very costly? Optical Mark Reader.

Led by Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, chairman of CBCP?s National Secretariat for Social Action, the Church leaders said in their letter to Melo that using the OMR can endanger the credibility of the 2010 elections because it is not fraud-proof.

The open election system combines manual voting and precinct counting with automated canvassing from the voting center to the national level. On the other hand, the optical system employs automated voting, counting and canvassing from the precinct to the national level.

Melo said the Comelec has begun preparations for the 2010 elections particularly on the use of OMR system which is also being used in other countries such as the United States and Bhutan.

Melo also clarified yesterday that those delisted from the voters? list may still be able to participate in the 2010 polls.

The Comelec had delisted nearly a million voters in Metro Manila, with Quezon City having more than 246,000 names removed from the official list.

?It is only a matter of course. Those who wish to vote in the 2010 elections will not be barred from registering anew,? the former Supreme Court justice told reporters in an interview at the main office at the Palacio del Gobernador building in Intramuros, Manila.

He said the delisted voters can register again before their city/provincial election offices to be able to vote in 2010.

Over the weekend, Comelec-National Capital Region Director Michael Dioneda said there were 974,145 names that were removed from the voters? list after they failed to vote in the two previous elections?the senatorial polls and the barangay elections.

Dioneda said the top five cities where majority of the delisted voters came from were Quezon City with 246,288; Manila, 245,437; Caloocan, 106,664; Pasig, 98,327; and Makati City, 67,443.