Tuesday, April 29, 2008 Poll body set to automate elections in 4 Armm provinces
THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) is looking at automating four provinces in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Armm) after the joint congressional committee on automation gives them the green light to proceed with the computerization in August.
Comelec Chairman Jose Melo said they are expecting to sign a negotiated contract with three bidders that will supply the needed equipment and technology for the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) and the Optical Mark Reader (OMR) system.
"By May 5 or 6, it is already probable that we will have signing of contracts so that we can move on (with the automation process)," Melo said.
Among the areas chosen to be automated are Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Shariff Kabunsuan and Basilan.
The election body is also studying if they could automate Sulu province but in Tawi-tawi, it will definitely be manual counting and canvassing.
Melo said the firms, which the commission has chosen to supply the automation equipment and technology, are Smartmatic Sahi Joint Venture (Smartmatic), Active Business Solutions Inc. (ABS) and Avante International (Avante).
The Comelec earlier rejected the Smartmatic after it failed to meet the bidding requirements of the DRE, but the commission reconsidered them and asked to supply the machines for the Maguindanao elections.
The agency allocated P867 million budget for the Armm elections where P279 million and P125 million were set separately for DRE and OMR systems, respectively.
On the other hand, ABS and Avante will provide their respective technologies for the OMR system after similarly failing to meet requirements in the re-bidding for the second technology.
ABS will take care of the elections in Shariff Kabunsuan and Basilan while Avante will handle Lanao del Sur.
Melo explained that it is important that the Armm elections be automated to enable them to evaluate the viability of having a computerized 2010 elections.
"We should have some automation before 2010 for us to see if we can do it. We will choose the best system to use," Melo said.
He explained that while having the DRE technology would pose less human intervention, its expensiveness could be its downfall.
DRE is a touch screen voting machine, where names of the candidates are displayed and to cast vote, the voter has to key in the name of the candidate of his choice on the screen, and his vote automatically gets counted while OMR uses a ballot-counting machine, wherein a voter is given a ballot, with pre-printed candidates' names, with corresponding ovals to shade or broken arrows to connect. The votes in the shaded ballots will then be scanned using an OMR. (MSN/Sunnex)
