Pinoy firms can now join ARMM poll automation bidding

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has amended one of its requirements in the bidding for the automation of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) polls in August to allow Filipino companies to participate.

The Comelec said the amendment is contained in Bid Bulletin No. 5 signed by executive director Jose Tolentino Jr. and issued last Tuesday. 

The bulletin amended portions of the request for proposal requiring that the automated election system to be procured by the Comelec “should have been successfully used in a prior public political election.”

“In order to be considered in the bidding, an offered Automated Election System (AES) now only needs to have been successfully used in prior election,” the Comelec said.

Filipino technology proponents, arguing that local technology has never been used in the country, opposed the earlier requirement.

The Comelec added that the proponents pointed out that “this would make the questioned requirement discriminatory as it would effectively disqualify local companies.” 

“Considering the widespread use of electronic voting systems in various non-political elections throughout the country, as well as the general acceptability of the results of those elections, it is abundantly clear to the Commission en banc that prior successful use in a public political election need not be the only applicable standard,” it added.

The Comelec will use two kinds of technology – the direct recording electronic (DRE) technology and optical mark reader (OMR) – in the ARMM polls.  

The poll body intends to study which of these systems is best suitable for the 2010 presidential elections.   

The DRE is a voting machine where a voter is presented with a screen showing all the names of the candidates, much like the locator screens in shopping malls.   

To cast his vote, the voter has to key in the name of the candidate of his choice on the screen, and his vote automatically gets counted.     

The OMR, on the other hand, is a ballot-counting machine where 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. 

Under the plan, the DRE technology will be used in Maguindanao, and the OMR in the rest of the ARMM.