Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — There are 82,000 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines stored in a warehouse in Laguna. But whether they will be used again in next year’s polls is the question the Commission on Elections (Comelec) must answer.
The government needs 100,000 PCOS machines, which is why the poll body is leasing 23,000 new optical mark readers (OMR) to add to the existing PCOS.
But the PCOS is obsolete and needs to be upgraded to match the new OMRs.
In December 2014, the Comelec decided to hire Smartmatic to run a check-up of the 82,000 PCOS machines, for roughly P300 million.
The plan was to refurbish them and eventually upgrade them to run the current technology.
But in February this year, a group of poll watchdogs asked the Supreme Court (SC) to stop the deal because it did not go through the bidding process.
Comelec argued that a bidding wasn’t necessary because Smartmatic supplied the PCOS machines, so it was the only suitable company, at least, to start the refurbishment.
In April, the SC nullified the deal and Comelec went back to square one.
In June, the poll body put the PCOS refurbishment up for bidding, along with a contingency project to lease 71,000 new OMRs, in case the refurbishment doesn’t work out.
Smartmatic emerged as the only qualified bidder for the lease of the OMRs, while no company made a bid to refurbish the PCOS.
Meanwhile, Smartmatic also bagged the deal to lease 23,000 more OMRs as part of the original plan.
Since it’s cheaper to refurbish the PCOS than to lease another, larger set of OMRs, the Comelec opened another refurbishment bidding on August 1. But that also failed.
Now, Comelec is far behind its original schedule as a contractor should have begun working on the machines last week.
Currently, the poll body has yet to choose between refurbishing the PCOS or leasing the larger set of new OMRs.
It would take about five months to build and test the machines and certify the software to run them. In addition, the government needs time to troubleshoot any kinks in preparations.
All these would determine whether the elections nine months away would still be fully automated.
