PCOS transmission testing a success

CEBU, Philippines - Even with a few delays, the Commission on Elections said that the field transmission test held yesterday in Cebu City and Lapu-Lapu City was generally successful.

Comelec-7 Provincial Supervisor Lionel Marco Casti-llano said that apart from a delay in transmission from Lapu-Lapu City due to a problem in the network signal used in the Precinct Count Optical Scan machines, they were still able to generate results and serve the purpose  of the nationwide simultaneous field transmission test.

Castillano explained that even with the PCOS having been used in the previous election, they want to make sure everything is ready by the elections. He said that through the test, they would still have time to make changes to address early detected problems.

Castillano said that there are really certain areas that have weak signals, causing a delay in the transmission of votes.

But Comelec 7 Regional Director Temie Lambino explained that they still have two back-up plans if in case the first option to transmit through the PCOS machine from the canvassing consolidated systems in the municipal or city level does not go through.

First, Lambino said that they can use the broadband global area network satellite.  But in case that does not go through as well, Compact Flash cards or the consolidated systems can be manually brought to the provincial election board who will feed the information to their system before sending it to the national election board.

During the past election, only the town of Tabogon had a weak signal and left no option for the election officers but to manually transport the CF cards.

Other than that, the Comelec officials are confident the use of PCOS machines would produce fast and accurate results with local level results obtained as early as three hours after the counting of votes starts.

Lambino said that there may have been apprehensions from the public on the use of PCOS machines from the conventional voting system the country has practiced for a long time.

“Some people do not trust computers which is why some people doubt the results and its integrity,” he said

But judging on the past election wherein results were produced faster and with no election protest having prospered, Lambino said that it may be high time for the people to embrace the use of the PCOS machines.

Lambino also said that the random manual audit team of the Department of Education can also support the results of the PCOS, if in case of doubts on its accuracy.

He explained that the RMAT is spread all over wherein they randomly audit election ballots manually. Lambino said that the manual results have usually matched those from the PCOS-generated results.

Further, the Comelec officials said that an additional 100 PCOS machines will be added to Cebu to accommodate the increased number of voters in the whole province.

Cebu has 2,509,520 registered voters, close to 100,000 more than the previous election, making Cebu still the number one province in the country with the most number of voters.

This number makes up half of the 4,114,061 voters in the whole regional 7.  Bohol has 775,785; Negros has 763,938 while Siquijor has 64,818. (FREEMAN)