New Comelec chief confident of automated polls in 2016

NEWLY appointed elections chief Andres Bautista is confident that automated elections will take place in 2016 despite the nullified deal on the repair of voting machines that marred the poll preparations for next year’s balloting.

Attending for the first time at the House of Representatives electoral and suffrage committee hearing, Bautista, former chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), said the poll body would stick to the automated elections systems law.

Bautista added that reverting to the manual elections would cause logistical nightmare for the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

“We’re committed to follow Republic Act 9369 which provides automated elections… In manual elections, it will balloon to 300,000 precincts and 1 million teachers. There are logistical issues that have to be overcome if we look at the manual counting option,” Bautista told lawmakers.

Bautista noted that there are advantages in the manual count, such as a more participative and transparent canvassing.

“There are pros and cons. There are things we need to take into account,” he said.

Other officials of the Comelec attended the hearing as lawmakers fear a no-election scenario in the light of a Supreme Court decision invalidating the P268.8 million “midnight deal” with Smartmatic for the repair, refurbishment and diagnostics of existing 82,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) vote-counting machines

A no-election scenario loomed larger after the poll body declared a failed bidding during the post-qualification evaluation stage for the lease of new 23,000 Optical Mark Reader (OMR) units.

Upon the assumption of office, Bautista announced that the poll body would simultaneously bid anew the refurbishment and repair of voting machines as well as the purchase of 77,000 new OMR machines.

This was seen as the poll body’s solution to the invalidated refurbishment deal. If the lease and purchase for new OMR units succeed, the poll body is looking at using 100,000 new PCOS machines in 2016, lowering the number of voters to 800 voters per clustered precinct. There is one PCOS per clustered precinct, according to the Comelec.