MANILA — The online voting and counting system for overseas Filipinos will be secured and glitch-free, parties behind the project said Tuesday.

Both the Commission on Elections and its contracted parties – SMS Global Technologies Inc., and Sequent Tech Inc., made the assurance Tuesday, which they also marked with the contract signing for “Online Voting and Counting System (OVCS) for Overseas Voting in the 2025 National and Local Elections.”

Sequent Tech Chief Executive Officer and Founder Eduardo Robles said they will be a technology with encrypted codes to protect the ballot of voters.

The electorate he added, can also check the status of his vote “from beginning to the end.”

“You can check if the cast ballot is correct, and at the same time, the privacy of the voter, and the privacy of the ballot is maintained.. only a few companies can provide this kind of security system,” Robles said.

“The cryptography being used is done by the leading cryptographers in the world which is part of the Sequent advisers. And we are confident that not only end-to-end it is viable, but it is end-to-end encrypted,” SMS President Antony Christian Angeles added.

Sequent, according to Robles, was also a partner in private and government organizations’ elections in Spain, Germany, Canada and South Africa.

Their undertaking with the Philippine government, however, is their first time to be involved in a national level election, Robles said.

Angeles meantime said that SMS is a corporation with more than 600 personnel, and 70 percent of them are engineers.  

SMSGT has several past undertakings with the government, Angeles said.

OVERSEAS VOTING DEMO

Before entertaining questions from the media, Sequent demonstrated how an overseas voter can cast his or her vote.

The system requires a voter to register using his or her passport, which needs to be revalidated through a live recording of the person’s face, alongside with his passport photo.

In the demonstration, the voter is given several minutes to vote, and before finally casting it, has another chance to review the entries.

The technology being offered by SMS Global and Sequent Tech, allows a voter to cast the vote using his or her own personal gadget anywhere.

During the demonstration, however, the system has refused to recognize the would-be voter, which according to Robles happened, because the former was already registered and need not re-enter his personal data.

“Before the demo, we actually did the registration with the same user. He was pre-registered... that’s why I said if you remember, we are checking the capture of the video of the passport... at that point, the face matches the passport... since you already did the process, the system said, you cannot do it twice... so he could just log in,” Robles said.

Aside from the security features, there is also a “third party” who will be tasked to monitor and secure the system, Robles and Angeles said.

Meanwhile voters who now look different in their passport due to physical enhancement can still be identified by the system and need not worry, Angeles said.

“When we do facial validation, it’s not just how the face would look like. The technology behind it actually checks the distance between your two eyes. So, if you’re going to go through plastic surgery, you have to move your other eye to the right. So, that is part of the measurement,” Angeles said.

He said biometrics limit the chances of one assuming the identity of another voter.

The joint venture said their system will also provide a link for a “helpline” in case voting problem occurs, Angeles said.

This, while insisting that their design is easy to navigate like those digital banking apps.

“There will be a help desk. There will also be a chat bot. All opportunities to be able to assist. So, one of the responsibilities of SMSGT is to provide the call center support. There would be numbers that they could call to assist them during the process,” Angeles said.

 LOWEST BIDDER 

Angeles meantime dismissed negative perceptions about the quality of their would-be service, which involves a P112M tag price.

The Comelec has placed the fund for the Online Voting and Counting System for overseas Filipinos with a P465 million budget, but SMS and Sequent offered their services for only P112 million, which is the lowest bid.

“Comparison of saying that it is too small is incorrect. What we’re saying is the price that we’ve offered Comelec, being a partner and being a Filipino company, in partnership with Sequent, is the right price for such type of technology,” Angeles pointed out.

“It is a cloud-based solution, Sequent’s experience being able to deliver typical elections like this. In this case, we are only looking at 2M potential voters is something that we have properly sized in the system. Again, I would like to reiterate, ito po ang tamang presyo. Hindi po siya mababa. Ito po ang tamang presyo, and I am confident that... we will be able to deliver this project,” he added.

Angeles said SMSGT is a “30-year old company engaged in IT and telecommunications,” and vetted Sequent before partnering with them.

Sequent has more than 10 years of impressive record, Robles on the other hand said.

Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia also the final price they were able to bag for the said undertaking was actually P100 million. 

“Kasi po may tax exemption... kaya may natipid pa muli ang Comelec na P12 million, plus yung natipid naming dun sa P465 million supposedly na budget para po dito sa internet voting,” Garcia said.

100 ACMs NOW IN THE COUNTRY

In the 2022 elections, the Comelec spent P411 million for overseas voting for 1.697 million Filipinos abroad, but only half of the number actually participated in the polls.

This time, he said, only countries that do not allow internet voting will only be given an automated counting machine (ACM) in their embassy or consular offices.

And as of their last count, there are 17 posts in 12 countries that will have ACMs which include China, involving eight posts; and posts in Ankara, Istanbul, Moscow, Abuha, Ahman, Tehran, Damascus Beirut and Tripoli.

Garcia meanwhile reported on the arrival of 100 ACMs based on “final customization” of the Comelec, which is part of the 110,000 automated counting machines that it is leasing from Miru Systems Co. Ltd.