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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Comelec to determine cancellation of automated Armm polls (11:40 a.m.)
MANILA -- The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will decide Thursday if it will totally scrap plans to automate the upcoming elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Armm).
Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento said the commission has made an initial consensus of canceling the automation in Armm if the evaluation of the bids and awards committee would prove that the bidders did not meet the specifications as required under the bidding rules and procedures.
"It's the entire Armm (that will not be automated) if the bidders will not meet all the specifications," Sarmiento said.
He also confirmed that both the bidding for the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) and the Optical Mark Reader (OMR) system would be shelved for the August 11 Armm polls.
"My understanding from the bids and awards committee is that if even OMR did not meet specifications it would not be implemented," added Sarmiento.
He explained that they would rather opt to postpone the automation than to suffer the same mistake that happened during the May 2007 polls where the contract awarded to Megapacific eSolutions for the automated counting machines was cancelled by the Supreme Court after finding it disadvantageous to the government.
"Comelec does not want a repeat of the Megapacific case," the poll official added.
In Resolution No. 8634 promulgated last April 11, the commission is canceling the implementation of the DRE machines, which were supposed to be tested in Maguindanao.
"The results of the technical evaluation revealed that the remaining bid (of Smartmatic Sahi Joint Venture) failed to comply with several mandatory technical requirements set out in the Request for Proposal," the commission said in its four-page resolution.
"Now, therefore, after extensive deliberation, the Comelec en banc, resolved... to reject the bid tendered by Smartmatic Sahi Joint Venture in connection with the automation of the 2008 ARMM elections," it added.
The Comelec intends to pilot test DRE in Maguindanao and the OMR in the rest of ARMM in the coming polls in preparation for the 2010 elections.
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.
OMR, on the other hand, is 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) |
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