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Friday, March 29, 2024

‘Poll automation problematic’

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Commission on Elections  chairman Andres Bautista on Tuesday  said a full automation in the 2016 polls would be impossible even as he admitted that logistical issues  would hamper  manual  count at precinct level.

Bautista

At a congressional hearing, Bautista said the Comelec however would have to abide by the automated elections law.

“There are different schools of thought: a full automation and the other one where everything will be automated except for the precinct-level counting [of votes]. It can be subject to a fair debate, unless there is a consensus among stakeholders on how to conduct the elections,” Bautista told the House committee on electoral reforms and suffrage.

Bautista appeared before the panel chaired by Capiz Rep. Fredenil Castro to update Congress on its preparations for 2016 national elections.

Bautista said the Comelec would need to increase the precincts to as much as 300,000 from the current 82,000 in the event that a manual precinct-level counting was to be carried out.

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Similarly, Bautista said the manual precinct-level count would need a million teachers, a figure that is much higher than the 250,000 teachers required under full automation.

“There is a logistical issue [if there will be manual precinct-level counting]. There are advantages, like transparency. We need to weigh them and consult the stakeholders and Congress,” Bautista said.

Also during the hearing, another Comelec official told the House panel the poll body would conduct a parallel public bidding for the refurbishment and repair of the 80,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan machines and the purchase of 100,000 optical mark reader voting machines to ensure the conduct of 2016 polls.

Earlier, the Supreme Court voided a deal for the repair of PCOS units between Comelec and Smartmatic.

“We can’t wait for refurbishment bid to fail before buying new OMR units. We have to do it at same time,” Comelec Executive Director Jose Tolentino said.

“If we had all the time, we would do one first [bidding for refurbishment/repair] following the other [bidding for purchase], but May 9, 2016 is not a moving target. We will indicate in the terms of reference that the contract for the purchase of OMRs will be cancelled if the refurbishment/repair deal will be secured,” Bautista pointed out.

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