HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
In January, as required by RA 8436, the Advisory Council was created, composed of technical experts from the Deprtment of Science and Technology (DOST), the Information Technology Foundation of the Philippines (ITFP), the University of the Philippines (UP), and two representatives from the private sector as recommended by the Philippine Computer Society (PCS). A Technical Ad-Hoc Committee was also established, composed of one representative eacf from the Senate, House of Representatives, DOST and COMELEC. Once again, a demonstration of the pilot-tested automated election system was presented by the COMELEC to these newly-created groups.
In February, with the concurrence of the Advisory Council and for lack of sufficient preparation time and funding, the automated election system was decided to be used only in the ARMM provinces of Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi for the May 11, 1998 National and Local Elections. Twenty-six (26) additional machines from AIS were to be bought to complement the current forty-two (42) that COMELEC already owns, which were to be upgraded to suit the requirements of RA 8436.
Pressed for time, in a matter of two months, preparations for the automated election in the ARMM were made. The techncial trainings, which were only a refresher course, were only held in March. The ballot face, EPROM chips, precinct headers and official ballots were able to be prepared at around half of March until the end of April. The field trainings were conducted around two weeks before election day. Due to the same reason of tmie constraint and due to the fact the machines were already owned by COMELEC, the Advisory Council, with the concurrence of COMELEC and DOST, also recommended, in April, that the requirement of RA 8436 that the machines to be used for the automated counting of votes in ARMM for May 11 be pre-tested by DOST be by-passed.
For this election, two ballots were prepared for each ARMM voter: one for the national positions: President, Vice-President, Senators and Party-List Representatives; and the other for local positions: Congressman, Governor, Vice-Governor, Provincial Board Members, Mayor, Vice-Mayor, and Councilors.
Ballots for the province of Sulu were re-counted at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) due to an error in NPO's printing procedure. Results in several municipalities in Lanao del Sur were re-counted manually also due to errors in printing of the ballots and procedural errors.
In November, ten counting machines were authorized to be transported to DOST for testing purposes in MR 98-3179. The ballots to be used for this test were to be taken from the leftover ballots for the recently concluded May elections with the National Printing Office (NPO). This was during the leadership of Commissioner-in-Charge for Modernization Project Luzviminda G. Tancangco, who was appointed to the COMELEC in August by then President Joseph Estrada.
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