The proposed solutions shall comply with the following minimum technical specifications:

COMPONENT 1
PAPER-BASED AUTOMATED ELECTION SYSTEM (AES)

Component 1-A
Election Management System (EMS)

1. The system shall have an integrated election management system (EMS) which shall be:
1. Capable of creating pre-election configuration data by direct entry and by importing these data from mySQL format, mdb format, or csv format, into the EMS, such as:


1. Voting jurisdictions (provinces, legislative districts, provincial districts, councilor districts, cities/municipalities, barangays, precincts)
2. Number of registered voters per precinct;
3. Elective positions and number of seats to be voted for;
4. Candidates information (full name, nickname/stage name, elective position, political party affiliation,  jurisdiction where he intends to run;
5. Title and date of elections;
2. Capable of automatically generating the ballot faces to be used in printing the official ballots;
3. Able to handle configurations for different types of electoral exercises both for the PCOS and the CCS, such as:
1. National and Local Elections;
2. ARMM Regional Elections;
3. Plebiscites;
4. Initiatives;
5. Recall elections;
6. Special elections.
4. Capable of maintaining an immutable audit log, which shall include, among others:
1. All user activities;
• User ID;
• Actual date and time stamps; and
• Specific action taken;
2. All system messages (including error messages);
5. customizable in accordance with the requirements of this RFP;
2. The system shall require authorization and authentication of all users, such as, but not limited to, usernames and passwords, with multiple user access levels.
3. The system shall make use of a graphical user interface, including, but not limited to, screen prompts, error messages and help screens.

Component 1-B
Precinct-Count Optical Scan (PCOS)

1. The system shall allow manual feeding of a ballot into the PCOS machine.
2. The system shall be capable of scanning a ballot sheet at the speed of at least 2.75 inches per second.
3. The system shall be able to capture and store in an encrypted format the digital images of the ballot for at least 2,000 ballot sides (1,000 ballots, with back-to-back printing).
4. The system shall be a fully integrated single device. The printing and transmission functionalities may or may not be integrated into the system.
5. The system shall have a scanning resolution of at least 200 dpi.
6. The system shall scan in grayscale.
7. The system shall require authorization and authentication of all operators, such as, but not limited to, usernames and passwords, with multiple user access levels.
8. The system shall have an electronic display indicating the acceptance or rejection of a ballot.
9. The system shall employ error handling procedures, including, but not limited to, the use of error prompts and other related instructions.
10. The system shall count the voter’s vote as marked on the ballot with an accuracy rating of at least 99.995 %.
11. The system shall not count ballots more than the specified number of registered voters, inclusive of the number of BEI members and support staff for every precinct/clustered precinct.
12. The system shall only count ballots intended for the city/municipality/councilor district for which it has been configured.
13. In case of over-voting for a position, the system shall not credit any vote for any candidate for the affected position. The rest of the votes for the unaffected positions shall be counted.
14. The system shall allow under-voting or no vote in any positions to be voted for.
15. The system shall be able to detect and reject fake or spurious, and previously–scanned ballots.
16. The system shall be able to scan both sides of a ballot and in any orientation in one pass.
17. The system shall have necessary safeguards to determine the authenticity of a ballot, such as, but not limited to, the use of bar codes, holograms, color shifting ink, micro printing, to be provided on the ballot and which can be recognized by the system.
18. The ballot design and layout shall be as specified by COMELEC.
19. The required features of the ballot are:
    
    
1. Names of the candidates shall be pre-printed on the ballot.
2. Only one ballot sheet per voter shall be used to accommodate all the names of the candidates for all elective positions.
1. Both sides of the ballot sheet may be utilized.
2. Each side of the ballot sheet shall be able to accommodate at least 300 names of candidates with a minimum font size of 10, in addition to other mandatory information required by law.
3. The ballot paper shall be of such quality as to prevent markings on one side of the ballot to bleed through to the other side.
4. Ballots shall have an Arabic translation of the titles of the offices to be voted for, in addition to and immediately below the English title, in areas where Arabic is of general use.
5. There shall be as many ballot faces as there are cities/municipalities and districts for the NLE.
20. The system shall be able to recognize the following marks on the appropriate space on the ballot opposite the name of the candidate to be voted for:
1. full shade;
2. partial shade;
3. check marks;
4. x marks.
21. The system shall be able to recognize both pencil and ink marks.
22. The system shall, before transmission, require the electronic authentication and certification of the election returns through a secure mechanism by at least two BEI members. 
23. The system shall transmit digitally signed and encrypted election results and reports enabled by public/private key cryptography to provide authenticity, integrity and non-repudiation utilizing at least 128-bit encryption scheme.
1. The system shall have the ability to transmit the precinct results to the following destinations:
1. city/municipal BOC;
2. provincial BOC;
3. NBOCs of COMELEC and Congress;
4. Dominant majority party, Dominant minority party, Accredited citizens’ arm, KBP; and
5. Central server:
24. The system shall generate a backup copy of the digitally signed and encrypted ER, including all generated reports, in a removable data storage device.
25. The system shall have alternative power sources, such as batteries, inverters or power generators, which will enable it to fully operate for at least 12 hours.
26. The system shall, immediately before the start of the voting/counting, require that its vote counters be zeroed out using administrator and operator access levels, and shall generate and print an initialization report showing that no votes have been cast/counted. The system shall not start unless the initialization report has been generated.
27. The system shall be able to generate and print the ER, statistical report and audit log for the precinct in the COMELEC-specified formats, both in soft and hard copies.
1. The statistical report shall contain the following information, among others:
1. Demographic information for the precinct (Province, City/municipality, barangay name, precinct number or clustered precinct name with the individual precinct numbers);
2. Number of registered voters for the precinct; and
3. Number of voters who actually voted in the precinct by gender and age group.

The final design of all required statistical reports shall be provided by the COMELEC within the period specified for Systems Customization/Development.

2. The audit log shall record the following, among others:
1. Machine ID;
2. Voting jurisdiction;
3. All user-generated activities, indicating:
• User ID;
• Actual date and time stamps; and
• Specific action taken
3. Transmission logs, including:
• User ID;
• Date/time each transmission started and ended (with the size and name of the transmitted file, such as precinct result);
• Date/time transmitted result was received at remote station;
4. All system messages (including error messages);
28. The system shall have error recovery features.
29. In compliance with RA 9369, the system must have demonstrated capability and been successfully used in a prior electoral exercise here or abroad, with a written certification to that fact from the election authority of the client country/state/province.
30. The system shall ensure that the printed election results and other reports shall remain legible for at least 5 years.
31. All related requirements by the system which are needed to make it fully operational during the entire duration of the project shall be included in the proposal/offer, including the software and hardware, back-up power supply, external data storage devices, ballot marking pens and other supplies, printers and other equipment, services, and consumables.
32. The system shall be customizable in accordance with the requirements of this RFP.
33. The design and functionality of the system shall still be subject to final customization requirements by the COMELEC.