Voting was halted at clustered precinct 757 in Mambaling Elementary School after its VCM malfunctioned. | Delta Letigio
CEBU CITY, Philippines – Voting was interrupted for about three hours in one of the precincts at the Mambaling Elementary School after its vote counting machine (VCM) malfunctioned.
But voters opted to stay and wait until it was fixed.
“Ganina ra kaayo mi naghuwat nya taas na kaayo ni nga linya. Tuyok na nis building,” one voter told CDN Digital.
Clustered precinct 757 opened at 6 a.m. on Monday, May 9, together with the rest of the precincts at the Mambaling Elementary School.
Voting was allowed to start but it was halted a few minutes later after members of Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) experienced difficulty in printing the voter’s receipt.
The defective VCM was retrieved and brought to their Comelec Cebu Central Hub for repair. Shaded ballots that were no longer fed into the machine were kept at the precinct and guarded by the BEIs and poll watchers.
These will be fed into the already fixed VCM within the day.
“Naa raman sad atong poll watchers nga nagmonitor. Nisugot na pud sila so wala nay angay ikabalaka,” said Bitang.
And while the VCR was undergoing repair, voters for clustered precinct 757 opted to wait in line.
The queue was even longer at about 10:30 a.m. as more voters arrived.
Gabriel Bitang, a Department of Education Supporting Office (DESO) technical support personnel who is assigned in Barangay Mambaling, said problems were already detected on the VCM assigned to clustered precinct 757 during an inspection which they made earlier.
But the defect was already corrected before the final testing and sealing of the VCMs last week.
“Nagtuo ko nga ma okay ra siya, irefresh lang nya ig ugma ato maokay na. Nya pag morning, nagkaproblema nasad,” he said.
It took about three hours before the VCM was again fixed and returned to clustered precinct 757 close to noontime.
Bitang gave the assurance that the VCMs SD card was not touched during the repair.
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