President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. experienced firsthand yesterday a minor glitch when he cast his vote in Batac, Ilocos Norte yesterday – becoming part of the cases of recurring technical issues recorded across the country, which the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE) said primarily involved the automated counting machines (ACMs).
Commission on Elections chairman George Erwin Garcia said the poll body had to replace over 300 ACMs due to malfunctions, with many of them repeatedly rejecting ballots.
The President had to insert his ballot a second time after it was jammed inside the machine on his first try at the Mariano Marcos Memorial Elementary School.
In Tacloban City, Speaker Martin Romualdez’s ballot was rejected three times by the ACM, and technical staff had to help him for a fourth time until it was accepted.
“During the election, reports of ACMs were monitored…but were promptly addressed by authorized technicians,” Garcia said.
“We have 16,000 contingency ACMs. At present, we have 110,000 ACMs being used nationwide,” he added.
Technical issues
With temperatures hitting 34 degrees Celsius in some places, Garcia said some voting machines “overheated.”
“It’s slowing the voting process,” he said.
“Due to the extreme heat, the ink (on the ballots) does not dry immediately, and the ballot ends up stuck on the scanners,” Garcia added, noting officials in some areas were resorting to aiming electric fans at the machines.
The Department of Education said it has received hundreds of reports from its field offices, mostly on malfunctioning ACMs and missing names on the voter’s list.
The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting also noted receiving report of voters who did not fill out all 12 senatorial slots but their “Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail” reflected additional names on their ballot.
PPCRV spokesperson Ana de Villa Singson said there was no way to verify these claims as they did not have access to the actual ballots used by the complainants.
One voter, for example, claimed to have selected only four senatorial candidates, but the receipt reflected eight, she said.
LENTE said the most common problem involved sensitive scanners that frequently rejected ballots.
“In these instances, the Electoral Board had to temporarily pause operations to clean the scanner, resulting in delays and long queues.”
“Voters were allowed to fill out their ballots but were informed that their ballots would be temporarily set aside and fed into the ACM once operational,” LENTE added.
Timely proclamations
Despite the glitches, Garcia said the local board of canvassers may start proclaiming winners for local races within two to three hours after polls closed at 7:00 p.m. yesterday.
The canvassing of votes and the proclamation of winners for the national race, on the other hand, is expected to be completed as early as five days.
Garcia said the Comelec en banc will open its consolidation system at around 3 p.m. today (Tuesday, May 13) to start the partial counting of votes for the national race that covers senators and party-list representatives.
The canvassing period for this year is expected to be faster compared to the 2022 elections, according to the poll body chief.
The Makabayan coalition, however, urged Comelec to revert to manual voting amid questions raised on the integrity of the ACMs’ software.
“The change in the software version of ACM from 3.4 to version 3.5 as an updated version created a cloud of doubt on the integrity of the polls and opens the possibilities to widespread fraud and voter enfranchisement” the group said in a statement.