“Automating the election at P11.3 billion will not automatically improve the kind of people who have been winning in our elections. “
by Ducky Paredes
It is entirely possible that the machines that will be provided by the probable winning bidder for the lease of equipment in the 2010 elections come from a company that has a checkered history.
In 2007, TV Anchorman Dan Rather did an investigative report that found Sequoia (the company that would provide the machines to Smartmatic International/Total Information Management, which submitted the lowest bid – P7.1 billion for the Comelec- estimated contract price of P11.3 billion) deliberately supplied poor quality punch-card ballots to Palm Beach County, Florida for the 2000 election. Rather found out, by talking to former Sequoia employees, that the ballots for Palm Beach County were produced with paper and manufacturing processes that were outside of normal specifications. This supposedly caused all of the problems with “hanging chads“. One worker speculated that the object was to discredit punch-card ballots and thus promote sales of electronic voting machines.
But when, after the 2000 elections, Florida replaced all punch-card voting systems with touch-screen systems, which were supplied by Sequoia and others, there were major problems with these and in 2007, Florida replaced all of these with optical-scan systems, which is the system that our Comelec will be leasing for the 2010 elections..
As of now, the Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC) of the Comelec has disqualified the bid submitted by the consortium of Indra Sistemas S.A. /Strategic Holdings, Inc./Hart Intercivic. This leaves only one bidder with the best chance of bagging the multi-billion peso election automation project — Smartmatic International/Total Information Management.
Of course, Indra Sistemas can still file a motion for reconsideration as did the Gilat Satellite Network Ltd./FF Cruz & Co./Filipinas Prefab Building Systems, Inc. Gilat’s motion for reconsideration is under evaluation by the SBAC.
The Smartmatic-Total consortium submitted the lowest bid of P7.1 billion, this is 37 percent lower than the P11.3 billion floor price given by the Comelec and should translate to a savings of P4.2 billion for the poll body. But this does not necessarily mean that it will automatically snag the contract. The bid price is just one criteria in the determination of the winner. The bidder must also prove that it has the technical expertise and the financial capability to undertake the project.
Insofar as the financial aspect is concerned, it may be relevant to ask if the Smartmatic-Total consortium can really pull this off at that price. Considering the huge discrepancy between the Comelec’s presumably well-studied estimate and the consortium’s P7.1 million bid price, one has to wonder about the quality and reliability of the equipment they will be leasing to us.
Comelec also has a checkered history in its recent attempts at automation. The one in the ARMM last year was a total failure, according to IT mavens. The fact that it took Comelec a full month before the ARMM results could be released proves to me that the automation did not work. That is also how long it would take if the ballots were counted manually. So, at what point in the process did the automation work, if that still took as long?
This also logically leads to the issue of whether at that price, the Smartmatic-Total combine can really supply, first: at the required deadline, the 82,500 voting machines to be used during the election; and second: the technical expertise and the foreign experts who will be at the forefront of this historic undertaking.
The Comelec requirement is that each these leased machines must be able to pass 26 different technical criteria under the rigid watch of the Commission’s technical working group and of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). Among other things, these criteria include the following functions: Detection of fake ballots, Ability to operate on alternative sources of power, such as battery, for at least 12 continuous hours; and Must be able to transmit consolidated election results to Comelec-designated servers.
One bidder – Indra Sistemas – has cast serious doubt on the workability of the P7.1 billion bid price and the capability of Smartmatic-Total to undertake and complete the task at that cost. Also, apparently, even now, there are still differing interpretations of how Comelec SBAC defines specific tasks that the entire budget of P11.3 billion includes, such as communication and logistical support, the printing of ballots, voter education, training of Comelec and election personnel, and so on. This is something that the SBAC must make clear to everyone before the project is awarded to the final winner.
What the Comelec must assure is that of avoiding failure at any stage of the automation process. Any glitches would put in doubt the credibility and integrity of the elections – whether it be in the printing of the ballots, the actual voting, the counting of the votes, the electronic transmission of the results, the canvassing and the final determination of the winners. All these are being left to the winning bidder.
Comelec Chairman Jose Melo himself has warned of the dire consequences of failure of the elections – including the possibility that a revolution might erupt. All of must bear in mind that the failure of elections could truly imperil not just the concept of electoral exercise, but the very idea of democracy itself. Because if we fail to hold credible elections next year, we cannot – and should not – rule out the possibility that our people may no longer see the need for holding elections. Should that happen, can despotic rule – whether by the communists or by the rightist elements in the military or by you-know-who – be far behind?
There is a very urgent need, therefore, for SBAC to subject the prospective, winner, whichever this may turn out to be, to the strictest due diligence. And this should cover all aspects of the undertaking — financial, technical and the human resources as well.
In this regard, perhaps the SBAC should verify and take into consideration the negative reports circulating around that Smartmatic and its partner, Sequioa Voting Systems, were involved in some questionable practices when it was assigned to undertake poll automation projects in some states in the USA. This reportedly led to an inquiry by federal authorities in the US.
The questions supposedly included the reliability of the machines. In many cases, the screen of the machines froze and failed to reflect the accurate number of votes. In other instances, data from 24 of 26 cartridges could not be relayed to the readers that would send the total number of votes to the central office and thus, could not be tallied. There are also reports (look it up in the Internet) that the technology used the Sequioa optical scanning system is almost obsolete.
The present Comelec, unlike the one in 2004, is almost bereft of commissioners familiar with IT matters. I can only hope they know what they are doing.
To me, spending P11.3 billion (or even just P7.1 billion) for leased machines is too steep a price to pay for the kind of officials that our elections have been providing us for so many years in election after election after election. Automating the election at P11.3 billion will not automatically improve the kind of people who have been winning in our elections.
Spending that kind of money that could do so much in other aspects of our lives only to get the same low-quality leaders is almost criminal.
# # # #
hvp 05.20.09)
Post a Comment