An election officer helps Carlota Orendain feed her ballot into the vote-counting machine during the mock elections at the Mabolo Elementary School. (CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA)
IT took election personnel nearly two hours to set up the vote-counting machine (VCM) that would be used for yesterday’s mock elections at the Lusaran Elementary School in Barangay Lusaran, Cebu City.
Voting was scheduled at 7 a.m. but actually began at 8:50 a.m. The first voter, Blesenia Codilla, had no trouble feeding her ballot into the machine but, the machine didn’t accept her vote.
Smartmatic technician Guada Mae Quilo Flores had to restart the machine after the vote-counting machine detected a paper jam.
The BEIs and Adam Duka, an election precinct specialist of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in Manila tasked to observe the entire voting proceedings had to assist Flores in figuring out the defects of the machine.
Flores resorted to manually shaking the ballot box with the machine on top of it, thinking this would make the paper drop into the ballot box.
Duka eventually helped resolve the problem by correcting the machine’s position, which was imprecisely installed with the ballot box.
By then, Codilla’s ballot was thoroughly creased and the machine did not count her vote.
At 9:05 a.m., the machine counted the first ballot cast by a voter.
Flores said she saw the machine display an exclamation mark, an indication of the machine’s rejection of Codilla’s ballot.
Codilla said she is worried that she may experience the same problem in the May 9 election.
“The ballot did not immediately go inside the ballot box. They had to change its positions. I hope they would correct it,” Codilla said.
Codilla said she saw that the BEIs and the Smartmatic technician did not know how to set up the vote-counting machine.
“Tarongon gyud sila ug train (They should be trained properly),” she said. Rosalita Roca, a resident of Upper Lusaran, had to recast her ballot twice since she shaded it too lightly.
She said the letters were too small for her to read as she had forgotten to bring her reading glasses.
Both Codilla and Roca were selected by their barangay council to participate in the mock poll.
Duka said the incidents were considered as minor glitches that needed to be corrected.
He said the training of BEIs as well as Smartmatic technicians should also be included.
Duka said the BEIs did not have a hands-on experience with the machines since the units arrived late last Friday evening.
The transmission of results to the City Board of Canvassers was accomplished at 12:35 p.m.