Ticket counting machine. This file photo shows the ticket counter used in the 2016 poll.

The technology company Smartmatic-which has so far secured more than 2.255 billion pesos ($44.789 million) for the 2022 Philippine election-may get another multi-million pesos contract for next year's vote, this time leasing 10,000 units Ticket machine (VCM).

After Smartmatic's bid for the second round of bidding on Friday, November 19th was 863.971 million pesos (17.154 million U.S. dollars), it went through a post-qualification process.

The approved budget for the contract was 86.4024 million pesos (17.165 million U.S. dollars), an increase from the initial maximum budget of 605.03 million pesos (11.925 million U.S. dollars) for the contract in the first round of bidding in September.

Smartmatic-the only company that purchased the bidding documents-did not submit a bid proposal to the voting agency at the time, citing an insufficient budget for the Election Commission (Comelec).

Filipinas Ordono, Smartmatic’s authorized representative, once stated: “The pandemic has disrupted the global supply chain that serves the electronics industry, leading to a large backlog in the manufacturing process.” “[This] has led to a severe shortage of electronic components worldwide, thereby pushing up costs. Up to an unprecedented level of 20% to 25%."

In addition to the lease of VCM, the winner of the 864 million pesos contract will also be responsible for the supply and delivery of SD cards for the machine.

After the second round of tenders on Friday, Smartmatic must submit its latest income tax and business tax returns and other necessary documents to the special bidding and bid winning committee within five days as part of the post-qualification process.

For the 2022 election, Comelec's goal is to reduce the number of voters in each electoral district from 1,000 in 2019 to 800, mainly due to the risk of COVID-19.

To do this, the electoral agency must lease 10,000 VCMs, which actually increases the number of voting areas.

Currently, Comelec owns 97,345 VCMs, which is the subject of renovation, a project led by Smartmatic after winning a contract of 637 million pesos in June.

Some lawmakers had hoped that Comelec would further reduce the number of voters in each constituency to 600, but opinion polls cited budget restrictions to explain why this is difficult to achieve.

Smartmatic has won four contracts related to the voting on May 9, 2022, totaling 2.255 billion pesos.

The breakdown is as follows:

If Comelec issues a ruling notice on the VCM lease to Smartmatic, the value of the election-related transactions of the solution provider in 2022 will exceed P3.1 billion.

Since the Philippines switched to automated elections in 2010, Smartmatic has won the most Comelec contracts. The company claims that it is 100% privately owned and has no ties to political groups.

Election violations, the most recent in 2019, have damaged Smartmatic's credibility. These include the delayed transmission of election results to a transparent server, the now infamous seven-hour failure.

However, despite criticism of Smartmatic, the random manual audits of the 2016 and 2019 elections—independent auditors manually counting votes and comparing the results with machine statistics—produced an accuracy rate of over 99%. – Rappler.com

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