Vote counting machines ready for deployment

Automated counting machines (ACMs) to be provided by the Mega Pacific eSolutions Inc. will be ready for use in next year's elections.

Mega Pacific officials stressed this even as they stressed that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) acted legally when it declared Mega Pacific as the winning bidder in the P1.3 billion counting automation project.

At the same time, MPEI spokesman Atty. Alfredo V. Lazaro, Jr. reiterated that the ACMs tested since September by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) is working at 100 percent accuracy rate.

He noted that the new batches of equipment are now designed to very humid environment and the quality of ballot paper for the actual election would be adapted to tropical conditions.

Lazaro said the Comelec observed the bidding process before coming out with a decision to award the counting automation project to the consortium composed of five information technology giants led by MPEI, ePLDT, WeSolv (subsidiary of Fujitsu Phils.), SKC & C of South Korea and US-based Election.com.

Lazaro said that the supplier of the ACMs, SKC & C is South Korea’s most advanced IT service provider. It provided the counting machines in the 2002 local and national elections in South Korea which covered 50 million voters.

MPEI was one of the several IT companies that submitted its bid to the Comelec after the poll body released an invitation to bid last January 28, 2003.

The bidding rules and regulations allowed manufacturers, suppliers and distributors to form themselves into a joint venture or consortium that will jointly undertake the project.

"Given the complexity, costs and wide scope of the undertaking it would not qualify any entity, domestic or foreign, from being declared eligible in joining the envisioned bidding," Lazaro said.