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Monday, April 07, 2008
Lawmaker wants automated poll to persist (2:01 p.m.)
MANILA -- Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said the Commission on Elections (Comelec) should exhaust all efforts to automate the August elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Armm).
Pimentel said the automation is an important step towards the computerization of the 2010 national and local elections when the next president will be elected into office. He explained that it will help in ensuring that the 2010 elections will be clean, orderly and credible.
As of this week, the contract for the automation project including the acquisition of the vote counting machines, have not been awarded by the Comelec Bids and Awards Committee (CBAC).
In his recent visit to the Comelec main office in Intramuros, Pimentel conferred with the newly appointed elections Chairman Jose Melo and fellow commissioners, in regards with the poll automation project.
"They informed me that one of the bidders was disqualified for not complying with certain requirements. But there is still one bidder being assessed by the Comelec," the lawmaker said.
The bidder is scheduled to discuss its proposal on Tuesday.
"There is still hope that the automation project will be successfully implemented," Pimentel said.
The Comelec is reportedly planning to use both the direct recording electronic (DRE) and optical mark reader (OMR) technologies for the Armm elections.
The DRE allows voting through touch screen or touch pad while the OMR requires voters to fill up a paper ballot which is then tallied through the use of the automated counting machine.
Based on the Comelec timetable, the contract for the poll automation project in the autonomous region should have been signed April 1.
Pimentel said Congress will wait for the recommendation of Chairman Melo on whether to postpone the Armm elections or to proceed with the holding of the elections on the schedule elections but reverting to the manual process of counting and tabulation.
Postponing the Armm polls or reverting to the manual process while the automation system is still being worked out will be approved by Congress. (CPB/Sunnex) |
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