Comelec assures Senate of automated polls in 2016

MANILA, Philippines - Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Sixto Brillantes wants the 2016 national elections to be automated unless a catastrophic event would render the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines useless.

Speaking during a Joint Congressional Oversight Committee hearing yesterday on the automated election system, Brillantes said the Comelec is pushing through with its bidding for new PCOS machines to supplement the existing ones for the 2016 elections.

“Definitely we’re not going manual. We have a formal resolution and we’re now implementing our resolution that we are going to buy (PCOS machines),” he said.

Brillantes said the Comelec action is consistent with the AES law requiring the use of an automated system of elections.

Congress had approved a budget for the Comelec to undertake automated elections, he added.

Several groups have been calling for a reversion to manual elections in 2016 because of some alleged glitches that they have found in the PCOS that could seriously compromise the results of the elections.

It was also argued that going back to manual would save the government a significant amount of money than pushing through with the purchase of the PCOS machines.

However, Brillantes said the only reason the Comelec would go back to the manual system is if something extraordinary happens that would make it impossible for them to undertake an automated election.

“For example, someone blows up all of the machines, then we would be forced to go back to manual,” he said.

Brillantes said reversion to a manual system would not be less expensive as claimed by the critics of  PCOS.

Going back to manual would mean tapping three times more teachers and that would mean three times the cost of what should be the amount paid to the teachers for the automated elections, he added.

Brillantes said  around 300,000 teachers are currently used under the automated election system.

Going back to a manual system would mean deploying 900,000 teachers who would be all be paid double of what they would receive under the automated system, he added.

A manual election would also be less efficient and  prone to fraud,  Brillantes said.

Chairman Helen Aguila-Flores said the Comelec Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) may be able to determine by February 2015 the winner in the bidding for the optical mark reader (OMR) machines to be used in the 2016 polls.

“We allocated two weeks for this but since there are only two bidders, maybe the process can be shortened,” she said.

However, their timeline would depend on how long the bidders would demonstrate their technologies and if they would have to skip Christmas vacation for the bidding process, Aguila-Flores said.

The two bidders vying for the P2.5-billion contract to supply some 23,000 OMR machines are Smartmatic and Total Information Management Corp.

The machines will augment the PCOS in 2016. 

Yesterday, BAC had started the initial stage of demonstration for the end-to-end process where bidders will have to show their election management system.

Flores said the bidder that would meet the legal, financial and technical requirements would be recommended by BAC to the Comelec. – With Sheila Crisostomo