Finally there was no fight. In the absence of other interested parties, the Government of Buenos Aires pre-awarded MSA the implementation of electronic voting in the Buenos Aires elections. In this way and if no unforeseen event arises this week, the company will pocket US $ 21 million at the official exchange rate for the realization of the PASO and the general ones. And he could credit another $5 million if there were a runoff.
The figures were published Monday in the Official Gazette. MSA had no competitors and is heading to provide the entire technological infrastructure of the Single Electronic Ballot (BUE), which in principle will be used on August 13 and October 22, in a "concurrent" manner with the national elections, which are defined with the traditional ballots and physical ballot boxes.
The MSA group is of national origin. Created in 1995 and initially oriented to the world of software, the company focused its guns on electoral engineering: voting and counting machines. The BUE is the same system that was already used in the Buenos Aires elections of 2015, although the company clarifies that the current devices present improvements. "The screen is 23 inches and not 19, like the one he used that time," they explain, by way of example.
In the City there are 3,150,000 people eligible to vote in 9,000 tables, of which 1,600 will be intended for foreigners. According to the resolution, for the entire process (PASO, general and runoff), MSA will charge a total of US $ 25,895,200, "which represents the sum of $ 5,984,380,720" at the official exchange rate of Banco Nación. The final award is scheduled for next week, official sources confided to Clarín. It is estimated that each vote will cost about US $ 3, something in line with what happens in other countries.
The Government plans to start with the schedule with the first staff training on June 24, the day of the closing of lists. MSA expects to have in each election a staff of 1,700 people (most of them temporary) and around 12,000 electronic ballot boxes to distribute in all the enabled tables and around 20% as a backup for possible damages.
It was stipulated that the payment will be made as follows. The first 40% in three stages: 15% in advance, another 15% at the time of delivery of the machines for training and 10% when the instruction is concluded. The remaining 60% is divided into two parts: half after the PASO and the last 30% after the end of the general elections, at the end of October.
In the sector they conjectured that there would be more interested in the business of the Buenos Aires Single Electronic Ballot, since MSA competes with the Spanish Indra (which will be in charge of the national provisional scrutiny), the Anglo-American Smartmatic, the Korean Miru System and Dominion Voting, of US capital.
Smartmatic gave up "because they did not give us the time to bring all the necessary equipment," explained a company source. He also anticipated that they do not intend to challenge the bidding process, one of the fears that persisted in the Buenos Aires government. The deadline to do so expires next Friday.
In one way or another, MSA (the acronym of the original name of the firm, Magic Software Argentina) is positioned as one of the main references in the provision of electoral technology. Both for voting with electronic ballot boxes (this year they were used in elections in Salta, Neuquén and in the last presidential elections in Paraguay), and to carry out provisional counts, the mechanism established by the current Electoral Code to concentrate, process and disseminate the results after each election.
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The race for electronic voting in CABA was launched and two companies bite at the tip
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