A lawmaker is urging the Commission on Election (Comelec) to consider the proposal of Smartmatic Philippines, in a letter to Comelec, dated May 13, 2024, to use existing vote-counting machines (VCMs) in the 2025 polls that will save billions for the country.

Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus B. Rodriguez, chairman of the House committee on constitutional amendments, pointed out that as the Philippine economy struggles with a ballooning public debt as well as a yawning budget deficit, which forced the national government to spend less and slowed down economic growth, the Comelec should highly consider the savings to be derived from utilizing existing VCMs.

Smartmatic has reaffirmed its commitment to honor its contract with the Comelec on the over 90,000 VCM’s leased to the body last 2015. Based on the Smartmatic letter, 93,977 precinct based Optical Mark Readers (OMR), and their accompanying Election Management System (EMS) are still covered by the warranty which extended to three subsequent national and local elections after the 2016 polls.

Rodriguez pointed out that Comelec still owns the Automated Election System (AES) software for EMS, the vote counting system, consolidated canvassing system (CCS) or the overall system used in the 2025 elections, which the body procured for P402.73 million in 2021.

Hence, there is no compelling need to purchase new machines for the 2025 elections, Rodriguez said.

To recall, the Comelec earlier awarded the contract to collect and count votes for next year’s midterm elections to the lone bidder, South Korean company Miru Systems Co. Ltd.

On the other hand, the Comelec had disqualified Smartmatic, which oversaw credible automated elections in the country from 2010 to 2022. But last month, the Supreme Court nullified the said Comelec resolution, citing grave abuse of discretion by the poll body.

The procurement of the Comelec’s new supplier has been plagued by a flurry of issues, including concerns on Miru’s questionable global reputation and incompetence in handling elections in many countries.

“The Comelec should act prudently and be practical in its approach. Unfortunately, the only alternative it presented is its contract with Miru, which will cost the government P17 billion, notwithstanding the company’s checkered record based on recent elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Iraq,” the veteran lawmaker said.

As brought out by House Representatives who attended the hearing of the House of Representatives Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms last March 12, 2024, in the Congolese and Iraqi elections which Miru recently handled, voter IDs were smudged, machines broke down, and — the most worrying — voting reverted to manual.

AUTHOR PROFILE

Jester P. Manalastas