By ROGER M. BALANZA
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has assured machines to be used to automate the 2010 elections have near-perfect accuracy.
Commissioner Rene Sarmiento told a gathering of councilors in Davao City that the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines have a 99.9995 percent accuracy rate.
Sarmiento was among guest speakers at the Philippine Councilor’s League Meeting held on Friday at the Insular Waterfront Hotel.
The machines would be provided bythe consortium of Smartmatic/Total Information System which won the bid to automate the coming elections. The lone qualifying bidder in the P11.2 billion contract, the Dutch-Philippine consortium submitted a bid of P7.2 billion or P4 billion less than the contract price.
About 80,000 PCOS would be used in the coming polls in the country’s first automated elections incolving 300,000 precincts that would clustered.
Sarmiento said the machines would distributed nationwide in November but Comelec has already started a massive public information campaign to teach voters how to fill up ballots.
He said coming polls would be easy for voters with results to come in early.
Filed under: 2010 elections, comelec | Tagged: comelec, rene sarmiento, smartmatic
