Polling officially opened at 7 a.m. in majority of the total 1,076 clustered voting precincts in Negros Oriental Monday.
However, a few hours after the voting was underway, some Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines were already showing signs of malfunction.
In Dumaguete City, first to go was the PCOS machine at precinct 0175B at the Mangnao Elementary School as well as the PCOS unit at Cluster 44 (comprising precincts 0109b, 0110a, 0111a, 0111b and 0112a) at the Dumaguete City High School in Calindagan.
The machines started rejecting official ballots, most likely with a malfunction of the back-up memory card, according to city election officer, Atty. Jerome Brillantes.
Brillantes explained that the back-up memory cards may have been wrongly inserted by the Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) after the Final Testing and Sealing of the PCOS machines were done last week.
He ordered the immediate removal of the back-up memory cards and instructed the Information Technology (IT) technicians, duly designated by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) to restart the machines and see if they functioned again.
But, the PCOS machines failed to resume operations, such that voting was done manually, with the official ballots filled out by voters being dropped into the bins and retrieved by the BEIs and placed inside brown envelopes.
Atty. Brillantes said he will not deploy the lone contingency (reserved) PCOS machine for Dumaguete until much later, when the counting will commence after polls officially end at 7 p.m.
In the meantime, the voting precincts with defective PCOS machines will proceed with the electoral process but on manual mode, he added.
The compact flash (CF) back-up memory cards that were removed from the defective PCOS machines were placed in envelopes and handed over to the BEI chairperson.
At Cluster 44, BEI chairman Mayani Mendiola said that 112 official ballots, all filled out by early voters, were successfully scanned by the PCOS machine.
But by 9:15 a.m. the PCOS machine started rejecting ballots. At 9:25 a.m. the BEIs, in the presence of watchers, voters and this reporter, retrieved the scanned ballots and placed them in a brown envelope.
Voting continued with the other official ballots being dropped directly inside the bin of the PCOS machine around 9:30 a.m., to be scanned later by another PCOS machine, most likely a reserved unit.
At 9:51 a.m. the PCOS machine restarted without a back-up memory card and accepted only ballot, after which it once again failed with its operations, thus prompting the BEIs to switch again to manual mode.
Elsewhere in the province, similar problems with the PCOS machines were reported.
Other problems encountered at voting precincts included voters unable to find their assigned precincts, long lines of voters, alleged distribution of political campaign flyers and even the alleged putting up of a voters’ assistance desk by a political party.
Acting provincial election supervisor Atty. Juvenal Tuale said he has directed the election officers in the six cities and 19 municipalities to be prepared with contingency plans in the event of malfunction of PCOS machines.
Only one contingency PCOS unit is assigned per city and municipality. But, Tuale said other PCOS machines can still be used as contingency when the need arises.
It would only slow down the counting and transmission process but will not affect the voting as voters can still cast their ballots but only on manual mode.
The ballots will be scanned by other PCOS machines later, although Tuale assured that this is a safe procedure as the CF cards assigned to the broken PCOS units will be used with the contingency machines. (PNA)
