A FRENCH technology firm won the contract to supply the Commission on Elections its 35,000 units of Voter Registration Verification System (VRVS), which it will be piloting in the 2019 polls.
Comelec Spokesman James B. Jimenez announced that Gemalto Philippines Inc., in a joint venture with NextIX, beat three other bidders, including Comelec’s perennial supplier, Smartmatic International Holdings, for the VRVS contract.
Comelec has yet to announce Gemalto’s winning bid, but the poll body announced last year the contract has an approved budget of P1.6 billion.
Jimenez said the VRVS will be pilot-tested during the mock election for the 2019 polls on Saturday.
He said it will be used in precincts in Manila, Quezon City, as well as in select municipalities in Pangasinan, Cavite, Cebu, Negros Occidental, Zamboanga del Sur, Davao del Sur and in all of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
“One RV machine will be used in each of the selected [clustered] precinct,” Jimenez said.
Comelec will deploy 35,000 VRVMs during the 2019 polls. Two thousand of these units will be held as a contingency.
VRVMs will be used to automatically check the biometrics of a voter, as part of Comelec’s attempt to “clean” the voters’ list, fast-track the voting process and eliminate flying voters.
It will replace the manual identity verification conducted by members of the Board of Election Inspectors using the Election Day Computerized Voters List before a voter is given a ballot.
For the mock elections at least, Jimenez said they expect the VRVS will initially prolong the voting period per person by a few minutes since voters will still have to get used to the system.
However, ultimately it will even lead to a shorter voting time, he said.
Jimenez added they expect the VRVS will reduce the processing time for a voter before he is handed a ballot from the usual 10 minutes to just two minutes.