The Central Electoral Board (JCE) announced it will not use the US$39 million scanners and fingerprint readers purchased for the 2016 election. Instead, the agency will return to the system used for the 2008, 2010 and 2012 elections with the incorporation of some IT solutions that have proven trustworthy in other countries. The equipment is described by the JCE as inconsistent and unreliable.
The electronic equipment had been purchased by the previous board of judges under past JCE president Roberto Rosario didn’t work for the 2016 election. The new JCE board says it will not take a chance on the equipment in the 2020 general elections. Rosario had justified buying instead of leasing the equipment arguing that the JCE would rent it out to other boards in the region. This never happened. In addition to the high purchase cost, the equipment has also cost millions in storage costs.
At the time of the purchase, Rosario had defended the system saying it would expedite the count and transmission of votes in a more secure and transparent manner. But the machines were deemed to be not reliable, mainly due to the fact that 19,000 technicians using the equipment were not insufficiently. Also, 36% of the voting stations could not transmit any data because of failures in transmission lines. As a result, more than 50% of the voting certificates for preferential votes had to be manually processed. The JCE also says that the equipment is now obsolete and would require a huge investment in upgrades in software and batteries.
Now, on Wednesday, 28 February 2018, the JCE announced it would not use the equipment that had been purchased for the automating of the registration of voters and for the electronic counting of the votes in the 2016 general election. The seller was the Spanish company Indra.
The decision was made after listening to recommendations of the Commission of IT Advisors with representatives of universities and private companies. The JCE still owes Indra US$13 million on the purchase. The JCE feels the color photographs available on the voter registration lists are adequate enough to identify the voters.
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Diario Libre
JCE
JCE
1 March 2018
