Are the days of agonizing wait, last-minute cheating machinations and "Hello Garci" type of scandals behind us now? Is clean and honest election—that oh-so-elusive Holy Grail of the Commission of Elections (Comelec) --within reach?

That’s what the winning consortium Smartmatic and Total Information Management (Smartmatic-TIM) promises to deliver after it bagged the contract to automate the May 10 2010 national and local elections.

The Comelec en banc awarded the project to Smartmatic-TIM on Wednesday, resolving that its P7.191 billion price was the lowest responsive bid.

The group was the only one among seven bidders that passed the technical, financial and legal and system evaluation requirements of the Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC) of the Comelec.

It was the first elections project of the local TIM but the second for Netherlands-based Smartmatic. Last year, it provided the Direct Recording Electronic machines that were used in Maguindanao for the elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), and was the transmission server of the results for the entire region.

The group cornered the 2010 poll automation contract amid brickbats from losing bidders that the Comelec bent the rules to accommodate it, and warnings from election operators and observers that the poll body is rushing the poll automation to peril.

Results out 1-2 days

But the consortium is out to prove the doomsayers wrong.

This early, Smartmatic-TIM is vowing that election results will be known in just a few days—in contrast to the past where operation quick counts—depending on which group is doing the job---led to more confusion, and the period of waiting allowed operators to manipulate the results.

“We are comfortable that within one or two days, we will have all the results for all the positions, nationwide,” Smartmatic Sales Director Cesar Flores said, shortly after the group got the award.

Smartmatic chief executive officer Antonio Mugica said the group’s previous experiences in automating the elections of other countries show that 80 percent of results were known in five to six hours after the close of voting.

“The remaining percent might take a little longer though,” he told reporters.

More than the fast results, Mugica said the sanctity of the ballots is protected and votes properly counted.

PCOS technology

The Precinct Counting Optical Scan (PCOS) technology will be used for next year’s poll exercise, with Smartmatic-TIM providing 82,200 machines nationwide.

The PCOS is a paper-based voting system, where the votes are counted and consolidated by the machine.

The results are then transmitted electronically to a server, from the municipal to the provincial and the national level. Except for the voting, the system eliminates human intervention.

“In our past projects, we have transmitted about a 150 million votes and not even one vote had ever been tampered…That includes the US and Latin America,” Mugica said.

With the award of the contract on its hands, the consortium also lashed out at its critics for raising the no-elections or massive failure of elections bogeyman.

 “Whenever you’re trying to make elections cleaner and more transparent, you will find resistance. There are people who will feel threatened by cleaner and transparent elections. We will find critics and we will find attacks,” Mugica said.

Short circuit

For the first time, the consortium also sought to address the incident where its machine emitted smoke during a machine demonstration.

It said that the incident was “unfortunate “ caused by overheated wires. Smartmatic tried to be philosophical about the incident.

“Smoke, although it has no sound, made a lot of noise. We did make a  big mistake in bringing in the wrong wire, but again, what short-circuited was not the machine, not the battery,” Flores said. (abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak)

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• Rafanan: Poll automation machines not fool-proof
• Smartmatic’s tainted past, low bid raise questions
• Smartmatic-TIM bags poll automation contract

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