CEBU, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) office in Cebu has set a synchronized final testing and sealing of the vote counting machines (VCM) today for the automated counting of votes after the May 13 midterm elections.
Lawyer Jerome Brillantes, Cebu provincial acting election supervisor, said every locality is expected to carry out mock elections wherein 10 test ballots are provided for every clustered precinct.
The standard ratio is one VCM to one clustered precinct.
Brillantes clarified that the mock elections today differs from what happens during the Election Day wherein there will be the opening of the voting and the transmission of the votes.
Brillantes said the local Comelec officers with other involved stakeholders will conduct the simultaneous testing to check primarily the “functionality” of the VCM’s whether its features such as the scanner and printer are working.
They will also have to check if the VCM’s are transported to the right precinct of a municipality or city.
Brillantes added the VCMs will also be tested whether these dispense the election returns which would show the total number of votes cast in a clustered precinct.
He said the activity is actually open for local candidates to witness which will be monitored by Comelec-Cebu province office.
In case a VCM bogs down, Brillantes said the VCM will be pulled out and will be replaced with the contingency VCM and all they need to do is transfer the card from the previous VCM to the new one.
For Cebu province, there are a total of 3,716 VCMs distributed across the towns and cities and more than 300 contingency VCMs.
He said all concerns and reports will have to be relayed to the Command Center in Manila also for local officers to be guided on how to resolve certain problems such as corrupted cards. — MBG (FREEMAN)