MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines could have a new election technology provider before the year ends. The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) has been tasked by President Duterte to come up with options for the country’s automated election system (AES). The President last month said he wanted the Comelec to drop tech provider Smartmatic, the firm that has been involved in automated elections in the country since 2010, for allegedly promoting cheating. “We will present concepts of how we can do an automated election other than (with) Smartmatic, preferably that can be done by Filipinos. Rio said the DICT also intends to come up with ways on how the next automated elections can be integrated using off-the-shelf components to make it cheaper.

Source: Philippine Star June 13, 2019 16:00 UTC