The Commisssion on Elections (Comelec) is asking interested bidders to join the auction for the P7.87-billion contract to provide an integrated automated election system for the May 2016 national elections. The announcement was indicated in a bid notice published in a newspaper on Tuesday, a month after the body chose to pursue “parallel bids” to ensure that polls won’t revert to manual voting. In May, the Comelec said that its first bidding track involves the purchase or lease of more than 100,000 automated voting machines while the second involves refurbishing more than 80,000 precinct count optical scan machines and a separate bidding for an additional 23,000 machines.

Bid notice, poll commission through its Special Bids and Awards Committee 1 (SBAC 1) said interested bidders should apply “for eligibility and to bid for the provision of Integrated Automated Election System through Lease with Option to Purchase for the May 9, 2016 national, local, and Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao elections.
The Contract with an approved budget of P7,867,298,140 has four components:
• 70,977 Election Management System and Precinct-Based Optical Mark Reader (OMR) or Optical Scan System; • ballot printing services for 47,076,857 ballots;
• 70,977 sets of ballot box; and
• 36,100 technical support personnel.

Bidders should have completed, within six years from date of submission and receipt of bids, a contract similar to the project,” the poll body said in the notice. Comelec said the bidding will be held through open competitive bidding procedures using a non-discretionary pass/fail criterion. Interested bidders may purchase bid documents from June 8 to 29 for a non-refundable fee of P75,000, before the deadline of bids submission.

Submission and opening of bids will be on June 29, at 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m., respectively.

A pre-bid conference is scheduled on June 16 to discuss the eligibility requirements and the technical and financial components of the project. In a related development, a separate Comelec resolution published in a newspaper yesterday also announced a pre-bid conference for the auction of 23,000 OMR machines on June 11. Only those bidders who purchased the bidding documents for the 23,000 OMR/OpScan [Optical Scanning] are allowed to raise questions and clarifications during the scheduled pre-bid conference,” SBAC 1 Resolution No. 2015-001 dated June 5 read. The poll body last month decided to bid out the repair contract for its 82,000 poll machines and the 20,000 new ones that will supplement it, while holding a simultaneous procedure to purchase 100,000 new machines altogether.