Comelec to acquire 3,540 more counting machines for 2016 polls

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Monday said it will acquire additional 3,540 vote counting machines (VCM) worth at least P133.4 million.

Comelec Commissioner Christian Robert Lim said in a press conference that the poll body needs to purchase additional VCMs to accomodate 54.5 million expected voters who will troop to 93,747 clustered precincts during the May 2016 local and national elections.

“We are expecting the number of voters to be 54.5 million. This translates under that clustering scheme to about more or less 93,647 clustered precincts,” he said in a press briefing on Monday.

Lim said that the additional VCMs will bring down the machine to voter ratio to 1:800 per precinct from the initial projected ratio of 1:1,000 per precinct.

The Comelec said that it currently has close to 94,000 VCMs.

“With the current number of PCOS that we have, which is 93,977, it will not be sufficient for the number of clustered precincts that we have that’s why we decided to [make] a repeat order,” Lim explained.

With the acquisitions of the new units, the total number of VCMs for the 2016 elections will be 97,517.

“Considering that there is an 80 percent (voters) turnout so we are expecting about 600 to 640 voters actually turning out per machine. It will also lead to a shorter queuing time,” Lim added.

Meanwhile, Lim said that the Comelec will also acquire 5,000 new ballot boxes worth at least P12 million.

Back up machines, VCMs for OAV

The Comelec official also said that they will allot additional 124 voting machines for the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV).

“We also decided to increase the number of units for OAV. In 2013, we used 67 machines. We are increasing it to 124 units so there will be a lot more jurisdictions in overseas that will have automated voting,” he explained.

The OAV was held in 2013 in countries with enough number of Filipinos. These countries include Hong Kong, Singapore and Saudi Arabia (Riyadh, Jeddah, Alcobar).

Lim said that four percent of the total number of alloted VCMs for the May 2016 elections will be used as backup for machines that will malfunction.

“We also want to maintain a 4-percent contingency back up in case of a failure of machines during Election Day so we can immediately replace the machines and avoid disruptions in the election process flow,” he said.

Lim also announced during the press conference that the Comelec will no longer push through with its original plan to utilize the old precinct count optical scan machines for next year's elections.

“Masyadong cumbersome. These are the reasons why we decided, considering also the shortness of the time as well as the complexity of the project," he said. —ALG, GMA News