The Commission on Elections has decided to reduce by four hours the voting period on May 9, 2016 by imposing a “touch-move” rule on voters.
Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said that from the estimated 20 hours, the voting period is expected to last 16 hours as a result of the rule allowing voters to verify their choices on screen by a second.
But Jimenez noted that the one-second, on-screen verification rule will leave the voters with no more time to correct or alter their choices of candidates.
He advised the voters to make sure that their votes are final before they feed the ballots into the machines.
“The challenge to all voters is to make sure that his or her ballot is clean and he or she has written the correct choices of candidates because we are exercising a touch-move kind of voting,” Jimenez said.
During the oral argument for the printing of voter receipts, the Supreme Court questioned the Comelec’s decision to activate the on-screen verification feature of the VCMs when it is not even required by the Election Automation Law.
The SC’s remark prompted the Comelec to shorten the time for the on-screen verification.
“We cannot remove that feature anymore since it would necessitate a new source code. But we can certainly shorten it,” Comelec chairman Andres Bautista explained in an earlier interview.
Jimenez said that the Comelec is also looking into the possibility for the Board of Election Inspectors to sign every voter receipt to ensure its authenticity given that the receipt has no any codes, precinct numbers, and other security marks.
The election process, Jimenez said, will start at exactly 5 a.m or one hour before the 6 a.m. voting period where the BEI or election worker will print an initialization report from the vote count machines.
During the voting, when the voters feed the ballot, the machine will automatically view his or her votes in the screen for one second and print an unsecured receipt, containing the names of candidates that a voter has chosen.
