Tempus Fugit

The supplemental budget for automation was submitted to the Department of Budget and Management even before Congress went on recess for the holidays. Unfortunately, the DBM hasn’t forwarded that budget to Congress. This obviously impacts automation timetables and nothing will be quite as screwed as voter ed.

Again.

2009 coming up

It’s almost here: the year before what might turn out to be the most important elections in recent memory. Just thinking about all the things that need to be done gives me hives.

The overarching need, of course, is to get started on the procurement of the automated election system.

About that – there seems to be a growing consensus that we should just lease the machines. That sounds good. After all, with a lease, there’ll be no worries about storage and maintenance. But will simply leasing the machines also mean that we will end up having to reinvent the wheel for every other election?

Take 2010 for instance. We leased the machines that we used in the 2008 ARMM polls. Now, we have to formulate a whole new Request for Proposal for 2010. If we purchased the machines in 2008, then we could already be working on getting the 2010 elections online, couldn’t we (at least for those areas that we can cover with the number of machines we have)?

Instead, everything is hanging on so many variables: will we get the money? will we get it on time? will we have enough time to adequately customize the machines? will we have time to satisfactorily work out the kinks?

Most everything else that needs to be done in 2009 really just spins-off from automation: generating public acceptance for the system, making sure voters know how to use the tech, that sort of thing. But that’s still a whole lot o’work.

Well at least there’s still some time left to take a deep breath. Too bad the air already reeks of gunpowder.