Comelec: No bidders yet for online voting system for overseas Filipinos

MANILA, Philippines — No firm has submitted a bid for the online voting and counting system that will be used for overseas voting in the 2025 midterm elections, the Commission on Elections said Thursday. 

The poll body said that the deadline is still two weeks away or on March 21 and is "not really a concern" at this time.

"(But) if we have no bidders on March 21, then we will declare another failure of bidding," Comelec-Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC) chairperson Allen Abaya said in an interview.

The SBAC earlier declared a failed bidding for the online voting project after the two bidders – Indra Soluciones Technologias de la Information and We Are IT Philippines Inc.— were deemed "ineligible."

This prompted the SBAC to schedule a second round of public bidding for the online voting system to be used by overseas Filipinos in 2025.

The Comelec is eyeing to implement internet voting in 76 foreign posts outside the Philippines.

The number of overseas Filipinos who participated in the elections jumped from 31% in 2019 to 34% in 2022.