House poll panel wants Comelec to lease new OMRs for 2016 polls

THE elections committee of the House of Representatives supports the option to lease new optical mark readers (OMR) instead of refurbishing the old 82,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines used in the 2010 and 2013 elections.

During the House suffrage and electoral reforms committee hearing Tuesday, panel chairman Capiz Rep. Fredenil Castro said the members of his committee are leaning toward leasing new vote counting machines instead of fixing the old ones.

He said refurbishing the vote counting machines would be counterproductive unlike in leasing the machines.

“What are we going to do with the machines that had already been purchased by the government? If we are going to refurbish it, then we will continue the refurbishment of the same until after it has become unusable. If we will continue to refurbish, then it will entail continuing expense on the part of the government, whereas if we lease new machines without acquiring them, we need not care what will happen to those machines after election, because this is only a lease contract with the supplier,” Castro said.

“I would like to advise chair of the Comelec …that the members of the committee are more inclined and more acceptable that we lease a new OMR so that we will not encounter the same problem as we encounter now on what to do with the old machines,” he added.

In his presentation before lawmakers, Commission on Elections (Comelec) chair Andres Bautista said the poll body en banc denied the motions for reconsideration on its earlier decision that upheld the protest filed by Smartmatic.

Bautista said since the poll body upheld the protest of Smartmatic in connection with the Comelec’s earlier disqualification on Smartmatic, the poll body is set to award the contract for the lease of 23,000 new OMRs to Smartmatic.

“The Comelec en banc ruled on the motion for reconsideration on new 23,000 OMR. (This is a) green light for us to issue notice of award to Smartmatic. The issue now is whether we would complement that with the refurbishment of the 82,000 PCOS or the lease of the new 77,000 new OMRs,” Bautista said.

The poll body under Bautista planned to simultaneously bid the refurbishment and repair of the old voting machines as well as to bid the lease to purchase of 77,000 new OMR machines and lease of new 23,000 OMR.

This was seen as the poll body’s solution after the Supreme Court invalidated the P268.8 million PCOS refurbishment deal with Smartmatic because the poll body failed to justify the direct contracting with the Venezuelan firm. The Comelec under then chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. went into direct contracting with Smartmatic to refurbish and repair the old machines because these were bought from Smartmatic.

The high court allowed Comelec to still use the old voting machines. The Comelec now opened the second round of bidding for the 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.

If the second parallel bid fails, the Comelec would resort to reusing the old machines and refurbish it instead.

The lease of new 23,000 OMR machines has an approved budget contract of P2.5 billion. Smartmatic offered a financial bid of P2.2 billion.

Meanwhile, the lease with option to purchase of the 77,000 OMR machines has an approved budget contract of P7.8 billion. The Comelec Bids and Awards Committee has recommended the award of the lease to the Comelec en banc. Bautista said the en banc has yet to calendar it pending the results of the financial bid for the refurbishment option.