Cagayan de Oro City 2nd district Rep. Rufus Rodriguez (Facebook)

Cagayan de Oro 2nd district Rep. Rufus Rodriguez is urging the Commission on Election (Comelec) to consider the proposal of Smartmatic Philippines to use existing vote-counting machines (VCMs) in the upcoming May 2025 polls. 

The move, which would save the Philippines billions of pesos, was pitched by Smartmatic to Comelec in a letter dated May 13, 2024. 

Rodriguez said that aa the Philippine economy struggles with a ballooning public debt as well as a yawning budget deficit--which forced the national government to spend less and slowed down economic growth--the Comelec should highly consider the savings to be derived from utilizing existing VCMs.

"The Comelec should act prudently and be practical in its approach," the veteran solon said in a statement Wednesday, May 22. 

"Unfortunately, the only alternative it presented is its contract with Miru, which will cost the government P17 billion, notwithstanding the company's checkered record based on recent elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Iraq," Rodriguez said, referring to the controversial contractor tapped for the polls next year. 

Based on the Smartmatic letter, 93,977 precinct based Optical Mark Readers (OMR), and their accompanying Election Management System (EMS) are still covered by the warranty which extended to three subsequent national and local elections after the 2016 polls.  

Comelec still owns the Automated Election System (AES) software for EMS, the vote counting system, consolidated canvassing system (CCS) or the overall system used in the 2025 elections, which the body procured for Php 402.73 million in 2021. Hence, there is no compelling need to purchase new machines for the 2025 elections, Rodriguez said.

Comelec earlier awarded the contract to collect and count votes for next year's midterm elections to the lone bidder, Miru Systems Co. Ltd of South Korea. On the other hand, the poll body had disqualified Smartmatic, which oversaw credible automated elections in the country from 2010 to 2022. 

But last month, the Supreme Court (SC) nullified the said Comelec resolution, citing grave abuse of discretion by the poll body.

The procurement of the Comelec's new supplier has been plagued by a flurry of issues, including concerns on Miru's questionable global reputation and incompetence in handling elections in many countries.

As brought out by solons who attended the hearing of the House of Representatives Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms last March 12, in the Congolese and Iraqi elections that Miru recently handled, voter IDs were smudged, machines broke down, and -- the most worrying -- voting reverted to manual. 

Also, Miru’s questionable dealings with the Argentinian government were mentioned, Rodriguez noted. 

"Why should we place our election integrity at risk and the country at a financial disadvantage when tried and tested VCMs are already in the Comelec's custody?" he asked.