Joining the company of modern democratic governments that utilize technology to streamline elections, the Philippines will begin implementing an internet-based voting system. In order to ensure that their results will be secure and untampered, the Philippine Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the International Foundation for Electoral System have requested the aid of local hackers as well as those that hail from across the world.

The voting system that they are attempting to break was created by the Spain-based Scytl Consortium, and cost the Philippine government $452,000. Starting July 10, Comelec will begin public testing of their newly-made voting system, using over twenty-five thousand absentee voters from Singapore as guinea pigs. Scandalous.

While the polls will be merely survey questions with no valuable or important data, the hackers have until July 30 to crack the system, providing both the developing firm and the Philippine government insight and information about possible security flaws and logic holes. As far as reputation and safety for the voting system go, Comelec commissioner Florentino Tuason Jr. claims:

“When Scytl presented the system, everybody was impressed on the security features. It is covered by international patent and it has been declared secured by no less than Switzerland and everyone in the global community should respect that decision,”

And this is not the first time the Scytl’s Consortium’s software system was put to use, already “being used in countries such as the U.S., Switzerland, and Belgium.” Whether or not this system will work in the Philippine’s population depends on how well the tests go, and how much difficulty hackers have to go through in order to crack the security.

[Via AHN]