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Indecent proposal to bloggers on automated election

I came across this posting from Ellen Tordesillas' blog site. Allegedly, someone from Smartmatic sent her a letter offering Ellen to write about their services. In exchange, she would be paid based on the number of articles written.

Smartmatic is the company that won the bidding for the Philippine 2010 poll automation. Tordesillas is one of the more respected writers/columnists here in the Philippines.

Here's the letter:

Dear Mrs Ellen

My name is Samira Saba and I work at Smartmatic as the Marketing and Communications Manager (www.smartmatic.com).

I have checked your blog and I find it quite interesting. I can see the articles published are responsible, and show that you as a rule strive to inform and educate your readers. For instance, the article "Rock the vote!" I would like to know if you have the time and the interest of writing some articles regarding the following subjects:

1) Election automation worldwide, and positive experiences in various countries.
2) Election automation in the Philippines, past and present.
3) Different technologies to automate an election. Perspectives and comparisons: Shortcomings, advantages, political implications.
4) Smartmatic technology in particular (in this case, we would of course furnish appropriate materials to the required depth).

If you are interested in adding our organization as a regular client for your freelance writer services, we can define the extent and number of articles you could write monthly. I will be glad to give you more details and answer the questions you may have.

If your answer to the above is positive, then I would appreciate a quotation for your services, with a target of two articles published per month to begin with.

I look forward to hearing from you the soonest.

Before we jump the gun on Smartmatic, we need to verify if, indeed, this Samira Saba is from Smartmatic. If not, this letter can be considered a spam or a scheme to ruin the credibility of Smartmatic. 

Now, if this letter is authentic and, indeed, Samira Saba is really from Smartmatic, then this company is really crazy for sending this letter to a journalist, more so to Ellen. This is bribery and an insult to journalists.

The 2010 poll automation is all about credibility. We need to have a secure system, incorruptible poll officials and a credible and honest technology provider. If we don't have these qualities in place, there we are in deep trouble here.

God bless us all!