Automation of ‘08 ARMM Polls Key to Clean Elections in 2010 — Pimentel

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Nene” Q. Pimentel,
Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said the Commission on Elections
should exhaust all efforts to automate the elections
in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in August
this year because it is an important step toward the
computerization of the 2010 national and local
elections when the next president will be elected into
office.

He said he was disturbed to find out that the contract
for the automation project, including the acquisition
of vote counting machines, has not been awarded by the
Comelec Bids and Awards Committee up to now.

During a visit to the Comelec main office in
Intramuros, Manila Friday, Pimentel conferred with
newly-appointed Chairman Jose Melo and fellow
commissioners, together with technical people involved
in the poll automation project.

“They informed me that one of the bidders was
disqualified for not complying with certain
requirements. But there is still one bidder being
assessed by the Comelec,” he said.

He said he was told that the said bidder is scheduled
to discuss its proposal on Tuesday (April 8).

“There is still hope that the automation project will
be successfully bidded out and implemented,” Pimentel
said.

The Comelec is reportedly planning to use both the
direct recording electronic (DRE) and the optical mark
reader technologies for the ARMM elections.

Pimentel said the successful implementation of
automation in the ARMM elections will help in ensuring
that the 2010 elections will be clean, orderly and
credible.

The DRE allows voting through touch screen or touch
pad while the OMR requires voters to fill up a paper
ballot which is then tallied through the use of the
automated counting machine.

Based on the Comelec timetable, the contract for the
poll automation project in the autonomous region
should have been signed April 1.

Pimentel said Congress will wait for the
recommendation of Chairman Melo on whether to postpone
the ARMM elections or to proceed with the holding of
the elections on the schedule elections but reverting
to the manual process of counting and tabulation.

He said any move to postpone the ARMM polls or to
revert to the manual process while the automation
system is still being worked out should be approved by
Congress.

Pimentel pointed out that computerization of the ARMM
elections had already been undertaken in 1996. He said
it would be a big setback to the efforts to modernize
the elections if the coming regional polls are not
automated.
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