The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has disqualified technology provider Smartmatic Corp. (Smartmatic) from participating in all bidding and procurement processes of the poll body.
Chairman George Erwin Garcia said the commission en banc approved the resolution disqualifying Smartmatic during its regular session on Wednesday, November 29, 2023.
The petition to disqualify Smartmatic was filed in June by former Information and Communications Technology secretary Eliseo Rio, former Comelec commissioner Augusto “Gus” Lagman, Franklin Ysaac and Leonardo Odono.
The petitioners cited “serious and grave irregularities in the transmission and receipt of election returns” in the 2022 national elections, claiming that there were irregularities between the transmission logs and reception logs from the precinct level to the Comelec’s transparency server.
Smartmatic has won all the biddings of the Comelec since 2010 when it first bagged the election automation project.
